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tarved  Rock 


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OS  MAN 


STARVED   ROCK 


a  Gbapter  of  Colonial  Ibtstors 


BY 

EATON  G.   OSMAN 

Member  Illinois  State  Historical  Society 


Second  Edition  :    Revised  and  Enlarged 


A.  FLANAGAN  COMPANY 
CHICAGO 


#1 


^ 


Copyright,  1895,  by  E.  G.  Osman 
Copyright,  1911,  by  A.  Flanagan  Company 


••  • 


PREFACE. 
*  • 

I  have  not  attempted  to  rewrite  the  history  of 
the  Illinois  country,  but  only  to  show  what  was  the 
part  played  by  " Starved  Rock,"  or  Fort  St.  Louis 
of  the  Illinois,  in  the  great  struggle  of  France  and 
England  for  the  possession  of  North  America. 
This  story  forms  an  unwritten  chapter  of  Amer- 
ican colonial  history,  which  has  been  overshad- 
owed, so  to  say,  by  the  comparatively  insignificant 
incident  (historically  speaking)  which  gave  to.  the 
Rock  on  which  Fort  St.  Louis  was  placed  its  ex- 
pressive modern  name. 

For  the  first  time,  too,  in  an  accessible  form,  a 
connected  chronicle  has  been  made,  as  a  part  of  the 
history  of  this  site,  of  the  first  Christian  mission 
in  the  Mississippi  Valley,  called  the  "  Immaculate 
Conception,"  a  record  of  Christian  missionary  en- 
deavor and  martyrdom  that  added  lustre  to  the  al- 
ways dramatic  story  of  the  early  Roman  Catholic 
missions  among  the  Indians  of  North  America. 

The  authorities  consulted  are,  I  think,  all  named 
in  the  notes  to  the  text,  for  the  benefit  of  those  stu- 
dents who  care  to  pursue  the  subject  to  greater 
length  than  was  here  deemed  advisable. 


241290 


I  have  no  dearer  aim  than  to 
make  leisurely  pilgrimages 
through  Caledonia;  to  sit  on  the 
fields  of  her  battles;  to  wander 
on  the  romantic  banks  of  her 
rivers;  and  to  muse  on  the 
stately  towers  or  venerable 
ruins,  once  the  honored  abodes 
of  her  heroes. 

— Robert  Burns. 


CONTENTS 

Preface     5 

Introductory  :  Physical    Characteristics    9 

The  Pathfinders  :     Sketches  of  Jolliet  and  Marquette  15 

The  Discovery  :    The  Voyage  of  Jolliet  and  Marquette  29 

La  Salle  in  Illinois  ;     La  Salle's  Early  Discoveries  39 

A  Year  of  Disaster  :     The  Work  of  the  Iroquois  57 

A  Year  of  Success  :    La  Salle  Founds  His  Colony  69 

Kismet  :     Failure  and  Death    79 

La  'Salle  :     His  Dream  of  Empire  87 

Tonty    95 

The  Mission  :     The  Immaculate  Conception   127 

The  Drama  of  the  Eighteenth   Century  :     The   Political  Prob- 
lem of  the  French    149 

Starved  Rock  in  the  Eighteenth  Century  :    The  Indian  Sieges  . .  153 

The  Last  of  the  Illini  :     The  Final  Tragedy 171 

The  Aftermath  :     The  Pottawatomies    185 

Modern  Starved  Rock  :    The  Era  of  the  White  Man 193 

The  Relics  :    An  Ancient  Deed  199 

Errata. 

Page   80 :      In   fourth    line   of  note   under  the   engraving,   after   the 
words,  "La  Salle,"  add  the  words,  "meriting  attention." 

Page  121 :    In  first  line  of  note,  spell  "St.  Come"  "St.  Cosme." 
Page  125  :     In  second  line,  spell  "Calliers"  "Callieres." 
Note. — The  Rock  has  been  purchased  by  and  is  now  in  the  posses- 
sion of  the  State  of  Illinois. 


INTRODUCTION. 

Gaspar,  how  pleasantly  thy  pictured  scenes 
Beguile  the  lonely  hour!     I  sit  and  gaze 
With  lingering  eye,  till  dreaming  Fancy  makes 
The  lovely  landscape  live. 

— Sou  they. 

PHYSICAL  CHARACTERISTICS. 

"I  have  stood  upon  Starved  Rock  and  gazed  for 
hours  upon  the  beautiful  landscape  spread  out  be- 
fore me.  The  undulating  plains,  rich  in  their  ver- 
dure ;  the  rounded  hills  beyond,  clad  in  their  forest 
livery;  the  gentle  stream,  pursuing  its  noiseless 
way  to  the  Mississippi  and  the  Gulf,  all  in  har- 
monious association,  make  up  a  picture  over  which 
the  eye  delights  to  linger;  and  when  to  these  are 
added  recollections  of  the  heroic  adventurers  who 
first  occupied  it;  that  here  the  banner  of  France 
so  many  years  floated  freely  in  the  winds;  that 
here  was  civilization  while  all  around  was  bar- 
baric darkness,— the  most  intense  and  varied  emo- 
tions cannot  fail  to  be  awakened."* 

Starved  Rockf  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  of 
natural  curiosities  of  the  West.    Once  a  minute  is- 


*  Breese  :    "History  of  Illinois." 

tThe  Rock  is  situated  in  La  Salle  County,  Illinois,  near  the  village 
of  Utica. 


10 


Starved  Rock 


land  in  the  vast  flood  of  waters  that  in  geologic 
ages  filled  the  present  Illinois  Eiver  valley — iso- 
lated now  from  the  bluff  that  here  bounds  the  Ill- 
inois Valley  on  the  south,  the  Rock  stands  apart, 
like  a  monemental  shaft,  or  mediaeval  watch-tower, 
a  solitary  sandstone  cliff,  whose  walls,  carved  into 


The  Top  of  Starved  Kock — Looking  North.* 

form  by  the  waters  of  other  ages,  rise  one  hundred 
and  twTenty  feet  above  the  level  of  the  river  of  the 
present  day.  Circular  in  form,  the  summit  of  the 
Rock  contains  about  half  an  acre  of  land  which  is 
still  partially  covered  with  the  growth  of  ever- 
greens and  oaks,  such  as  the  first  white  man  found 
crowding  its  meager  area,  the  native  forest  trees 

*  Showing  approximately  one-third  of  the  area  of  the  Rock. 


Introduction 


11 


of  prehistoric  Illinois;  while  its  sides  are  draped 
with  vines,  ferns  and  wild  flowers  and  the  remains 
of  the  cedars  and  pines  of  a  former  time. 

The  summit  is  accessible  only  by  the  southern 
escarpment,  where  the  flood-eddies  of  Illinois 
River  heaped  the  sand  against  the  base  of  the 


Looking  East  from  Top  of  Starved  Rock. 

Rock.  Nature's  hint  has  been  accepted  by  man, 
both  savage  and  civilized,  who  has  cut  rude  steps 
in  the  sloping  side  of  the  Rock  and  thus  made  a 
practicable  path  for  its  ascent.  This  pathway  has 
been  used  for  the  purpose  probably  since  the  first 
man  reached  the  top  and  saw  its  strategic  strength. 
For  the  Rock  is  a  nature-made  citadel,  as  impreg- 
nable to  assault  as  Gibraltar;  and,  like  many  an- 


12  Starved  Bock 

other  feudal  refuge,  it  has  more  than  once  repelled 
direct  attack  and  been  captured  only  after  starva- 
tion had  slain  its  defenders. 

From  the  summit  the  valley  of  the  Illinois  lies 
spread  out  before  the  eye  like  a  picture — an  in- 
comparable view,  limited  only  by  the  reach  of  hu- 
man vision.  To  the  east  the  eye  follows  the  thread 
of  the  river  as  it  flows  past  cultivated  farms  and 
under  the  shadow  of  verdure-clad  hills.  In  the 
near  distance  rises  Buffalo  Rock,  in  form  and  sub- 
stance like  Starved  Rock  itself,  but  larger,  its 
plateau  comprising  many  acres;  beyond  which  may 
be  seen  the  ascending  smoke  of  Ottawa's  factories. 

Turning  to  the  west,  the  eye  lingers  over  the 
broader  but  more  sluggish  stream  that  steals  away 
between  green  and  fertile  fields,  or  hides  behind  low 
clumps  of  trees,  until  the  silvery  trail  is  lost  in  the 
distance,  where,  just  above  the  horizon,  extending 
from  bluff  to  bluff,  over  the  wider  expanse  of  river, 
hangs  the  great  bridge  of  the  Illinois  Central  Rail- 
road, which  on  a  clear  day  may  be  seen,  as  a  gigan- 
tic spider's  cable,  suspended  above  the  river, 

Like  a  triumphal  arch 
Erected  o'er  its  march 
To  the  sea; 

or  like  a  screen,  behind  which  sit  the  twin  cities 
of  La  Salle  and  Peru. 

Prom  the  northern  segment  of  the  Rock  one  may 


Introduction  13 

look  across  the  valley  and  beyond  the  village  of 
Utica  to  the  bluff  that  marks  its  narrow  width; 
while  directly  at  one's  feet  is  the  river.  On  the 
farther  shore,  and  a  mile  westward,  where  now  is 
a  cultivated  field,  once  stood  the  ancient  La  Van- 
turn  of  the  French,  the  Kaskaskia  of  the  mission- 
aries ;  otherwise  the  chief  village  of  the  tribes  that 
once  occupied  the  "Illinois  country"  as  their  hunt- 
ing grounds,  who  made  this  plain  their  favorite  and 
for  many  years  their  permanent  summer  home. 

The  last  native  woodlands  of  the  Illinois  Valley 
in  La  Salle  county  are  on  the  hillside  of  the  south- 
ern bank  of  the  river,  which  form  the  background 
of  Starved  Rock,  looking  toward  the  south. 

Such  are  the  physical  characteristics  of  Starved 
Rock,  which  in  themselves  have  made  the  Rock  fa- 
mous as  a  landmark  in  Illinois  for  centuries ;  but 
the  historical  recollections  centering  here  are  even 
more  noteworthy  and  in  recent  years  have  brought 
the  Rock  into  prominence  as  the  most  interesting 
spot  west  of  the  Alleghenies,  associated  with  our 
colonial  era. 


JcLcavu   nvzwfUAXtc 


[The  painting  from  which  the  picture  was  made  was  dis- 
covered by  chance  at  Montreal,  a  few  years  ago,  and 
has  strong  claims  to  probability. — Thwaites:  "Father 
Marquette."] 


THE  PATHFINDERS. 

In  vice  untaught,  but  skill'd  where  glory  led 
To  arduous  enterprise. 

— Euripides. 

SKETCHES  OF  JOLLIET  AND  MARQUETTE. 

The  first  white  men  who  are  known  to  have  seen 
the  eminence  now  known  as  Starved  Rock  and  the 
great  Indian  town  of  the  Illinois,  LaVantum,  near- 
by, are  Louis  Jolliet  and  Jacques  Marquette,  re- 
turning in  the  year  1673  from  a  voyage  of  discovery 
of  the  Mississippi.  Not  that  they  were  the  first 
Europeans  who  saw  the  Mississippi.  More  than  a 
century  before  either  was  born  the  Spaniard  Al- 
varez de  Pineda  (1519)  had  entered  the  river  and 
another,  De  Soto  (1541),  had  explored  it  as  far  as 
the  Arkansas  and  was  buried  beneath  its  muddy 
waters.  But  with  De  Soto  the  exploring  and  col- 
onizing energy  of  Spain  was  exhausted ;  and  as  the 
Mississippi  Valley  had  never  appealed  to  the  Span- 
iard as  a  possession,  amid  the  stress  of  wars  at 
home  that  succeeded  the  age  of  Spanish  explora- 
tion, even  the  memory  of  what  Spanish  navigators 
and  explorers  had  seen  of  the  northern  shores  of 
the  Gulf  of  Mexico  in  the  sixteenth  century  was 
lost,  and  the  Mississippi  lapsed  into  the  unknown, 

15 


16  Starved  Rock 

to  be  found  again  when  in  the  movement  of  the 
world's  great  drama  its  cue  was  called. 

France  on  succeeding  Spain  as  a  world-power 
devoted  her  colonizing  energies  more  especially  to 
North  America.  Jacques  Cartier  as  early  as  1535 
explored  the  St.  Lawrence  as  far  as  the  site  of 
Montreal,  thus  blazing  the  trail  for  Champlain 
who  in  1608  founded  Quebec  and  laid  the  corner- 
stone of  New  France,  thus  "  building  the  hive 
whence  poured  the  swarm"  of  heroic  Recollet  and 
Jesuit  missionaries,  and  the  voyageurs  and  cour- 
eurs  de  hois  who  scattered  themselves,  within  the 
next  thirty-five  years,  over  the  interior  and  pushed 
their  examination  of  the  continent  to  the  farthest 
limits  of  the  Great  Lakes.  The  missionaries 
found  the  trails,  and  as  the  missions  were  pushed 
farther  and  farther  westward  the  annual  Rela- 
tions* of  the  fathers  seldom  failed  to  make  mention 
of  a  " great  water"  still  farther  to  the  west,  of 
which  their  Indian  flocks  gave  them  information. 

In  this  way  the  French  came  within  "hailing 
distance"  of  the  Mississippi  as  early  as  1635,  when 


*From  1632  to  1673  there  was  published  annually  at  Paris  a  little 
volume,  called  a  "Relation,"  which  contained  an  account  of  the  far- 
spread  work  of  this  Jesuit  mission  to  the  Indians  for  the  twelve  months 
previous.  It  was  largely  made  up  from  reports  and  letters  sent  in  by 
the  missionaries  to  their  superiors  at  Quebec.  To-day  these  "Re- 
lations" are  of  very  great  value  to  historians,  for  from  them  is  ob- 
tainable what  is  often  the  only  information  we  have  of  affairs  in  New 
France   for  certain  periods." — Thwaites:   "Father   Marquette." 


The  Pathfinders 


17 


Nicolet  reached  Green  Bay*  and  the  Fox  River  of 
Wisconsin  and  there  heard  of  the  "great  water" 


Jean  Talon,  Intendant. 

which  he  supposed  was  the  Pacific.     Still  more 
exact  information  of  the  river  was  broght  to  Que- 


*Originally,  Grande  Baye,  perverted  by  the  English  to  "Green  Bay. 


18  Starved  Rock 

bee  in  1660  by  two  young  fur  traders  named  Pierre 
Esprit  Radisson  and  bis  brotber-in-law,  Medard 
Chouart,  known  as  Sieur  des  Groseillers,  two  of 
tbe  most  daring  of  all  the  early  hunter-trader-ex- 
plorers of  New  France.  As  early  as  1659  they  had 
penetrated  the  interior,  sixty  days'  journey  south- 
westward  from  Lake  Superior,  and  there  saw  a 
grand  and  beautiful  river  comparable  in  its  ma- 
jestic proportions  only  to  the  St.  Lawrence  itself. 
The  Relation  of  1660,  which  recorded  this  discov- 
ery in  a  rather  inconsequential  way,  failed  to  mem- 
tion  the  names  of  these  adventurous  traders,  the 
first  white  men  who  saw  the  Mississippi  after  De 
Soto ;  and  so  it  happened  that  both  they  and  their 
discovery  were  forgotten  by  the  chroniclers  until 
only  a  few  years  ago  (1886)  when  Radisson 's  nar- 
rative, written  some  years  later  than  1660,  was 
found  in  London  in  the  archives  of  the  Hudson's 
Bay  Company,  of  which  he  was  the  inspiring 
genius.* 

Such  travelers'  tales  as  these  by  Radisson  and 
by  Allouez  and  Dablon  in  the  Relation  of  1669-70, 
where  the  Mississippi  is  described,  although  it  had 
not  been  seen  by  the  writer,  and  those  of  still  others, 
doubtless,  whose  names  have  not  been  recorded  by 


♦Agnes  Laut:  "Pathfinders  of  the  West."  Here  the  story  is  set 
out  in  detail,  with  an  account  of  Radisson's  earlier  adventures.  See 
also  Bryce  "Remarkable  Story  of  the  Hudson'r  Bay  Company." 


The  Pathfinders  19 

any  annalist,  filled  the  minds  of  the  French  author- 
ities in  Canada  with  the  mystery  of  the  Mississippi 
and  aroused  interest  in  the  secret  of  its  origin  and 
outlet ;  but  no  steps  were  taken  to  solve  the  prob- 
lem until  Jean  Talon,  intendant,  the  one  man  of 
keenest  political  vision  then  in  Canada,  caught  in 
these  stories  a  gleam  of  French  dominion  in  the 
West,  and  made  haste  to  realize  his  dream  pf  em- 
pire by  taking  possession  of  the  great  western  coun- 
try as  "essential  to  the  successful  prosecution  of 
the  conquest  of  North  America  from  the  colonists 
of  England  and  the  soldiers  of  Spain." 

By  his  order,  therefore,  Sieur  de  St.  Lusson,  on 
June  4,  1671,  at  the  Sault  de  Ste.  Marie,  ceremon- 
iously proclaimed  the  royal  authority  over  all  the 
great  Northwest,  Father  Claude  Allouez,  of  whom 
more  will  be  heard  later,  making  the  harangue  to 
the  assembled  Indians.  This  done,  Talon  set  about 
finding  the  Mississippi  and  exploring  the  country 
through  which  it  might  flow. 

Having  obtained  from  France  the  necessary 
authority,  he  selected  as  his  agent  for  this  service 
one  Louis  Jolliet,  a  young  man  who  had  witnessed 
de  St.  Lusson  *&  ceremony  at  the  Sault,  and  who 
was  already  noted  in  Canada  as  an  explorer  and 
continental  pathfinder. 

Jolliet,  whose  name,  with  that  of  Marquette,  will 
forever  stand  near  the  head  of  the  list  of  explorers 


<7^jfa&^ 


20  Starved  Rock 

of  the  Mississippi  Valley,  was  one  of  the  most  dar- 
ing and  successful  of  the  explorers  of  New  France. 
The  second  son  of  Jean  Jolliet,  whose  marriage  to 

Marie    d'Abancour,    on 
October  9,  1639,  was  at- 
tended by  Jean  Nicolet, 
y7  then  just  returned  from 

Cf  the  Wisconsin  country, 

Louis  was  born  at  Quebec  in  1645  and  was  baptised 
on  September  21  of  the  same  year,  as  is  attested  by 
the  records  of  the  church  of  Notre  Dame  de  Quebec, 
still  extant.  His  father,  who  had  come  to  America 
from  Sezanne  in  France,  was  a  poor  wagonmaker ; 
but  the  son,  early  deciding  to  become  a  priest,  was 
educated  for  that  office  at  the  Jesuit  College  of  Que- 
bec, receiving  the  tonsure  and  the  minor  offices  at 
the  age  of  seventeen.  He  then  bcame  an  assistant 
at  the  College.  As  a  student  he  was  skilled  in  pious 
learning  and  acquired  some  reputation  as  a  polemic 
in  philosophy;  and  it  is  said  Talon  first  met  the 
young  man  at  a  public  discussion  in  philosophy  in 
which  both  took  part.  Soon  after  this,  however, 
Jolliet  suddenly  abandoned  his  career  in  the  church 
to  follow  the  calling  of  his  elder  brother,  Adrien,  a 
fur  trader.  He  first  made  a  Trip  to  France,  and 
then  plunged  into  the  woods,  where  he  quickly 
obtained  a  reputation  for  courage  and  for  success- 
ful enterprise  and  exploration. 


The  Pathfinders  21 

In  1668  Talon  sent  Jolliet  to  Lake  Superior  to 
find  the  .  copper  mines  which  rumor  had  already 
located  in  that  region,  as  well  as  to  find  a  better 
•route  to  that  lake  than  the  trail  via  the  Ottawa 
River,  then  in  common  use.  This  exploration  was 
made  in  1669.  Jolliet  did  not  find  copper ;  but  on 
his  return  voyage  a  service  rendered  to  certain 
Iroquois  Indians,  captives  among  the  tribes  of  the 
lakes,  put  him  in  the  way  of  finding  a  new  route 
"around  the  lakes,"  until  then  unknown  to  the 
French,  via  Lakes  Ste.  Claire  and  Erie;  so  that 
Jolliet  stands  in  history  as  the  discoverer  and  first 
white  navigator  of  both  these  lakes,  as  well  as  of 
the  Ste.  Claire  River,  although  the  name  Ste.  Claire 
was  given  to  the  lake  and  river  by  La  Salle  some 
years  later.  Jolliet  coasted  the  northern  shore  of 
Lake  Erie ;  and  although  on  this  first  journey  over 
the  route,  he  crossed  from  Erie  to  Ontario  by  way 
of  Grand  River,  he  then  learned  of  the  easier  pas- 
sage via  Niagara,  with  its  short  portage  around  the 
great  cataract. 

During  the  years  spent  in  the  region  of  the  Great 
Lakes,  Jolliet  became  familiar  with  the  numerous 
dialects  of  the  Algonkins  and  their  neighbors,  and 
made  for  himself  a  reputation  for  prudence  and 
judgment  and  the  tact  so  necessary  to  carry  one 
through  the  Indian  country.  Father  Dablon,  Su- 
perior General  of  the  Mission  of  the  Society  of 


22  Starved  Rock 

Jesus,  speaks  of  him  as  a  man  of  discretion  and  of 
"a  courage  to  fear  nothing  where  all  is  to  be 
feared";  while  in  both  the  Jesuit  and  the  civil  re- 
ports he  is  spoken  of  as  a  man  of  unusual  ability, 
' '  who  might  be  trusted  to  do  difficult  work. ' '  Talon 
therefore  selected  to  find  the  Mississippi  him  who 
then  was  probably  the  one  man  in  all  Canada  the 
best  equipped  for  this  difficult  task. 

Jolliet  left  Quebec  early  in  the  fall  of  1672 ;  and 
Governor  Frontenac,  Talon  having  been  recalled, 
wrote  to  Minister  Colbert:  "I  have  deemed  it 
expedient  for  the  service  to  send  the  Sieur  Jolliet  to 
discover  the  South  Sea,  by  the  Maskoutins  country, 
and  the  great  river  Mississippi,  which  is  believed 
to  empty  into  the  California  Sea.  He  is  a  man  of 
experience  in  this  kind  of  discovery,  and  has  al- 
ready been  near  the  great  river,  of  which  he  prom- 
ises to  see  the  mouth. ' '  4 

As  was  customary  on  all  such  expeditions,  the  ex- 
ploring party  was  accompanied  by  a  priest;  and 
Jolliet  was  directed  to  take  with  him  as  his  mis- 
sionary chaplain  the  Jesuit  Father  Jacques  Mar- 
quette, then  stationed  at  the  Ottawa  Mission  at  St. 
Ignace,  on  the  mainland  opposite  the  island  of 
Mackinac.  The  selection  is  said  to  have  been  made 
at  Jolliet 's  request;  for  the  two  young  men  were 
acquaintances,  if  not  friends,  and  may  even  have 
talked  over  such  an  enterprise  at  the  Jesuit  house 


The  Pathfinders  23 

at  Quebec;  for  of  course  the  quest  of  the  Missis- 
sippi was  then  in  many  minds  besides  that  of  the 
Intendant  Talon.  It  was,  in  fact,  the  geographi- 
cal problem  of  the  time  in  New  France,  the  solu- 
tion of  which  must  have  lured  Jolliet,  as  we  know  a 
burning  desire  to  see  the  Illinois  in  their  own  coun- 
try made  this  quest,  when  the  orders  came,  a  God- 
sent  privilege  to  Marquette. 

Jacques  Marquette  is  the  best  beloved  of  all  the 
priestly  figures  concerned  in  the  exploration  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley.  A  man  of  most  loveable  dis- 
position and  of  the  sincerest  piety,  he  was  also,  as 
Father  Claude  Dablon  wrote  after  his  death,  a  man 
of  "  unrivaled  zeal,  and  angelic  chastity,  an  incom- 
parable kindness  and  sweetness,  a  childlike  candor, 
a  very  close  union  with  God." 

Born  at  Laon,  France,  on  June  1,  1637,  he  was 
the  son  of  one  of  the  oldest  and  most  conspicuous 
families  of  that  ancient  and  renowned  city.  Begin- 
ning with  Vermand  Marquette,  a  follower  of  Louis- 
le-Jeune  (1137-1180),  his  ancestors  were  faithful 
servants  of  the  King,  holding  intimate  relations  to 
the  person  of  the  Crown  as  well  as  important  com- 
missions in  the  royal  service  and  recipients  of  the 
royal  favor  at  frequent  intervals  for  five  hundred 
years.  Nicolas  Marquette,  the  father  of  Jacques, 
was  himself  an  eminent  civil  magistrate  who  suf- 
fered temporary  loss  of  his  wealth  and  banishment 


24  Starred  Bock 

from  his  native  town  because  of  his  loyalty  to 
Henry  IV.  (1587-1610)  during  the  latter 's  contest 
with  the  League,  a  fidelity  that  was  richly  rewarded 
when  Henry's  cause  proved  triumphant.  Consid- 
ering the  marked  fidelity  and  attachment  of  the 
Marquettes  to  the  Crown,  it  is  not  a  little  remark- 
able that  no  less  than  four  members  of  this  royalist 
family  should  have  served  in  the  French  army  in 
America  during  our  struggle  against  George  of 
England  and  that  three  of  them  should  have  laid 
down  their  lives  in  that  generous  service.  The 
fourth,  who  served  under  Washington,  returned  to 
Laon,  where  he  died  in  1811.* 

The  Marquettes  were  churchmen  of  course ;  but 
the  piety  of  Jacques  was  inherited  from  his  mother, 
the  gentle  Rose  de  la  Salle,  whose  ancestor,  the 
noted  Jean  Baptiste  de  la  Salle,  had  founded  the 
Order  of  the  Brothers  of  the  Christian  Schools, 
which,  anticipating  by  many  generations  the  mod- 
ern free  school  system,  gave  free  instruction  to 
thousands  of  poor  boys  of  France.  After  Mar- 
quette's death,  his  sister  Francoise,  in  1685, 
founded  a  similar  order,  the  Marquette  Sisters, 
which  still  exists  under  the  name  of  the  Sisters  of 
the  Providence  of  Laon. 

Jacques  Marquette  was  the  youngest  of  a  fam- 
ily of  six  children.    Although,  as  we  have  seen,  he 


♦Thwattes:    "Father  Marquette."  Ch.  T. 


The  Pathfinders  25 

came  of  the  warrior  and  governing  class,  the  gentle 
hearted  youth,  doubtless  through  the  influence  of 
his  mother,  elected  to  become  a  priest  and  a  Jesuit 
missionary.  For  this  office  he  was  educated  at  the 
neighboring  city  of  Nancy,  where  in  1654  we  find 
him,  at  seventeen,  entered  as  a  novice.  On  com- 
pleting his  studies  he  became  a  teacher,  notably  at 
Reimes,  Charleville  and  Langres. 

But  so  zealous  a  soul,  impatient  always  for  the 
day  when  he  should  be  called  to  devote  himself  to 
the  toil  and  the  suffering  and  the  self-sacrifice  of 
the  foreign  missionary,  could  not  but  welcome  the 
chance  to  take  part  in  the  heroic  and  dangerous 
service  and  to  share  in  the  martyrdom  of  the  Jesuit 
Fathers  then  carrying  on  in  North  America  "one 
of  the  most  remarkable  missionary  enterprises  in 
all  history, '  **  the  story  of  which  was  being  told  from 
year  to  year  in  the  annual  Relations  sent  to  Paris 
by  the  fathers  superior  resident  in  America.  He 
bided  his  time  in  patience,  and  at  length  in  1666 
received  the  welcome  order  to  proceed  to  New 
France  to  prepare  for  the  work  of  a  forest  mis- 
sionary. 

Marquette  arrived  at  Quebec  on  September  20, 
1666,  after  a  long  voyage,  at  an  era  of  Atlantic  nav- 
igation when  even  the  quickest  passage  was  an  ex- 
perience but  little  short  of  physical  martyrdom; 


*Thwaites:     "Father  Marquette. 


26  Starved  Rock 

yet  after  but  twenty  days  of  rest  he  was  sent  by 
the  Father  Superior,  Francois  le  Mercier,  to  Three 
Rivers  "to  be  the  pupil  of  Father  Driiilletts  in  the 
Montagnais  language."  Here  during  the  succeed- 
ing two  years,  in  spite  of  the  all  but  insurmountable 
difficulties  of  Indian  languages,  Marquette  is  said 
to  have  completely  mastered  no  less  than  six  root 
tongues,  with  most  of  their  dialects.  It  was  a  won- 
derful feat  of  linguistic  acquisition  and  distin- 
guishes him  as  the  man  of  his  time  having  the 
greatest  command  of  Indian  languages  in  the 
Northwest. 

From  Three  Rivers  he  went  (1668)  to  Sault  de 
Ste.  Marie,  to  the  Ottawa  Mission,  where  with 
Father  Dablon,  his  superior,  he  built  a  church. 
In  1669  he  was  sent  to  La  Pointe,  on  Chequamegon 
Bay,  Lake  Superior,  succeeding  Father  Allouez. 
Here  he  met  members  of  the  Illinois  tribes,  who 
went  there  to  trade  and  who  told  him  of  their  own 
country  as  well  as  of  the  "Great  River.' '  The 
missionary's  was  an  all  but  hopeless  task  there; 
and  Indian  wars,  in  which  the  Sioux  appeared, 
soon  drove  him  back  to  Mackinac  (1671),  whence 
he  was  transferred  to  St.  Ignace,  on  the  mainland 
opposite.  Here  he  built  a  chapel,  "the  first  sylvan 
shrine  to  Catholicity  at  Mackinaw,"*  and  in  this 
laborious  post  the  pious  priest  found  need  for  all 


*  Shea  :     "Discovery  and  Exploration  of  the  Mississippi  Valley." 


The  Pathfinders  27 

his  patience  and  christian  fortitude.  Yet  he  was 
happy,  though  suffering  all  conceivable  bodily  dis- 
comfort and  mental  anxiety,  if  as  opportunity  of- 
fered he  might  but  have  the  blessed  privilege  of 
opening  by  the  baptismal  sacrament  "the  doors  of 
bliss  to  the  dying  infant  or  more  aged  repenting 
sinner."  Here  he  remained  until  summoned 
(1672)  to  join  Jolliet  in  the  discovery  and  explora- 
tion of  the  Mississippi. 


THE  DISCOVERY. 

Oh,  Jolliet,  what  splendid  faery  dream 

Met  thy  regard,  when  on  that  mighty  stream, 

Bursting  upon  its  lonely  unknown  flow, 

Thy  keel  historic  cleft  its  golden  tide : — 

Blossomed  thy  lips  with  what  stern  smile  of  pride? 

What  conquering  light  shone  on  thy  lofty  brow? 

— Frechette.* 

VOYAGE  OF  JOLLIET  AND  MARQUETTE. 

Jolliet  arrived  at  Point  St.  Ignace  from  Quebec 
on  December  8, 1672,  at  the  opening  of  the  northern 
winter.  Father  Marquette  welcomed  both  him  and 
his  instructions.  "The  day  of  the  Immaculate 
Conception  of  the  Holy  Virgin  whom  I  had  contin- 
ually invoked  since  coming  to  the  country  of  the 
Ottawas,  to  obtain  from  God  the  favor  of  being 
enabled  to  visit  the  nations  on  the  river  Mississippi 
—this  very  day  was  precisely  that  on  which  M. 
Jolliet  arrived  with  orders  to  go  with  him  on  this 
discovery,"  he  writes  in  his  journal  of  this  memor- 
able voyage.  "I  was  all  the  more  delighted  with 
this  news  because  I  saw  my  plans  about  to  be  ac- 
complished, and  found  myself  in  the  happy  neces- 
sity of  exposing  my  life  for  the  salvation  of  all 
those  tribes,  especially  the  Illinois,  who,  when  I 

*  Translated  by  W.  W.  Campbell  F.R.S.C.  for  'The  Story  of  Canada." 

29 


30  Starved  Rock 

was  at  St.  Esprit,  had  begged  me  very  earnestly  to 
bring  the  word  of  God  among  them." 

During  the  long  winter  the  two  young  men  made 
every  possible  preparation  for  their  voyage,  by 
enquiry  concerning  the  country  of  the  savages 
who  made  Mackinaw  a  rendezvous  during  the  win- 
ter months.  "  Because  we  were  going  to  seek  un- 
known countries  we  took  every  precaution  in  our 
power,  so  that  if  our  undertaking  were  hazardous  it 
should  not  be  foolhardy.  To  that  end,"  he  writes, 
"we  obtained  all  the  information  we  could  from 
the  savages  who  frequented  these  regions ;  and  we 
even  traced  out  from  their  report  a  map  of  the 
whole  of  that  new  country." 

On  May  17,  1673,  the  explorers  set  out  from  St. 
Ignace,  accompanied  by  five  voyageurs,  all  in  two 
birch-bark  canoes.  For  the  voyage  they  carried 
Indian  corn  and  some  jerked  meat,  as  well  as  suit- 
able goods  as  presents  to  the  natives  they  ex- 
pected to  meet  on  the  way.  "At  the  outset  Mar- 
quette placed  the  enterprise  under  the  patronage 
of  the  Immaculate  Virgin,  promising  that  if  she 
granted  them  success,  the  river  should  be  named 
' The  Conception.'  This  pledge  he  strove  to  keep; 
but  an  Indian  word,  the  very  meaning  of  which  has 
been  disputed,  is  its  designation."* 

Coasting  along  the  shore  of  Lake  Michigan  until 


♦Hinsdale:     "The  Old  Northwest.' 


The  Discovery  31 

they  reached  Green  Bay,  they  fentered  that  body 
of  water  and  came  at  length  to  Pox  River,  "the 
joy  that  we  felt  at  being  selected  for  this  expedi- 
tion animating  our  courage  and  rendering  the  work 
of  paddling  from  morning  to  night  agreeable  to 
us,"  writes  Marquette. 

Ascending  Fox  River  to  the  portage  to  the  Wis- 
consin, which  they  knew  would  lead  them  to  the 
"Great  River,"  they  followed  the  latter  stream  un- 
til on  June  17,  a  month  to  a  day  from  Mackinaw, 
the  expanse  of  the  Mississippi  burst  upon  their 
view.  They  gazed  enraptured— "a  joy  that  I  can- 
not express, ' '  wrote  Marquette.  Not  forgetting  the 
haughty  man  at  Quebec,  "whose  fortunes  he  felt 
he  was  bearing,"  Jolliet  named  the  river  "La 
Baude,"  in  recognition  of  Frontenac's  family;  but 
Marquette,  with  devotion  to  the  great  dogma  of 
his  church  and  with  reverence  for  his  vow,  named 
it  "The  Conception,"  "with  something  of  the 
fervor  which  had  warmed  the  Spaniard  who  a  cen- 
tury and  a  half  before,  had  bestowed  upon  it  at 
its  mouth  the  name  of  the  "Holy  Spirit."*  En- 
raptured though  they  were,  not  even  the  boldest 
flight  of  their  imaginations  measured  the  greatness 
of  the  valley  they  had  opened  to  European  gaze 
or  was  adequate  to  express  the  vastness  of  the 


*Winsor:    "Cartier  to  Frontenac."    Marquette  also  records  the  fact 
that  the  Indians  called  the  river  "Missipi." 


32  Starved  Rock 

* 
territorial  empire  they  were  that  day  adding  to  the 

possessions  of  France. 

Descending  the  great  river  was  an  easy  task; 
and  Marquette's  journal  becomes  a  moving  tale, 
in  which  all  the  magnificence  of  the  country  in 
the  livery  of  primeval  nature,  seen  in  the  glory  of 
mid-summer,  is  noted  by  the  historian  of  the  ex- 
pedition ;  but  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  follow  the 
explorers  as  they  continued  that  portion  of  their 
journey.  Having  on  July  17  reached  a  point  below 
the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas  River,  and  having  satis- 
fied themselves  that  the  river  did  not  flow  to  the 
"Sea  of  Virginia"  or  into  the  "California  Sea," 
but  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  they  turned  their  canoes 
toward  Canada  and  home. 

When  they  reached  the  mouth  of  the  Illinois 
(Riviere  de  Divine)*,  having  been  assured  by  the 
Indians  that  here  was  the  shorter  and  more  direct 
route  to  the  Lac  des  Illinois,  they  entered  and  fol- 
lowed it  to  the  northeast,  delighted  with  the  stream 
and  the  country  it  watered.  "We  had  never  seen 
anything  like  this  river,"  writes  Marquette,  "for 
the  richness  of  the  soil,  the  prairies  and  woods,  the 
buffaloes,  the  elks,  the  deer,  the  wild  cats,  the  bus- 
tards, the  wild  geese,  the  ducks,  the  paroquets  and 


*Jolliet  gave  the  Illinois  the  name  Divine,  or  Outrelaise,  in  compli- 
ment, it  is  supposed,  to  Frontenac's  wife,  noted  for  her  beauty,  and 
Mile.  Outrelaise,  her  fascinating  friend,  who  were  called  in  court 
circles   les  divines. — Winsor:    "Cartier  to   Frontenac." 


The  Discovery 


33 


even  the  beavers.  It  is  made  up  of  little  lakes  and 
little  rivers.  That  upon  which  we  voyaged  is  wide, 
deep  and  gentle  for  sixty-five  leagues." 


Marquette's  Genuine  Map. 

In  ascending  the  Illinois  Marquette  records  one 
stop,  made  with  the  Peorias,  an  Illinois  tribe,  the 
location  not  being  mentioned ;  but  he  says  he  there 
"  baptized  a  dying  infant  a  little  while  before  it 


34  Starved  Rock 

died,  by  an  admirable  providence,  for  the  salva- 
tion of  its  innocent  soul,"  the  tender  record  of 
undoubtedly  the  first  baptism  in  Illinois  if  not  in 
the  Mississippi  Valley.  Higher  up  the  stream  the 
explorers  came  to  the  village  of  the  Illinois,  called 
the  Kaskaskias,  containing  seventy-four  cabins, 
where,  says  Marquette,  they  were  kindly  received 
by  the  inhabitants  who  "  compelled  me  to  promise 
to  return  and  instruct  them." 

This  village  was  located  on  the  north  bank  of 
the  Illinois  River  about  a  mile  west,  below  Starved 
Rock;  so  that  Marquette's  record  is  the  first  men- 
tion in  history  of  a  site  closely  allied  to  the  story 
of  Starved  Rock  and  that  supplies  a  peculiarly  in- 
teresting chapter  of  the  annals  of  the  Church  in 
Illinois. 

The  discoverers  remained  at  Kaskaskia  but  three 
days,  and  then  one  of  the  chiefs  with  his  young  men 
escorted  them  to  the  lake,  via  the  Chicago  portage,* 
whence  they  pushed  on  toward  Green  Bay.  Where 
now  is  the  canal  uniting  Green  Bay  with  Lake 
Michigan  was  then  a  portage,  which  gave  the 
travelers  access  to  the  present  Sturgeon  Bay,  on 
whose  waters  they  found  easy  paddling  to  the  last 
rapids  of  Fox  River  and  the  mission  of  St.  Fran- 
i  :T"rm 

*The  historians  are  inclined  to  say  their  route  was  via  the  Des- 
plaines  River  rather  than  by  the  Calumet,  chiefly  for  the  reason  that  in 
returning  to  the  Illinois  in  1674,  Marquette  took  the  former  route. 


The  Discovery 


35 


cois  Xavier,  where,  at  the  end  of  September,  they 
found  friends  and  rest,  after  having  traversed,  in 
canoes  a  distance  of  something  like  twenty-five 
hundred  miles. 

Having  been  transferred  during  his  absence  on 


JOLIET'S  LARGER 


Jolliet's  Map  of  the  Illinois.* 

the  Illinois  to  the  St.  Francois  Xavier  Mission 
(now  DePere,  Wis.),  Marquette  at  the  end  of  his 
long  journey  was  at  home.  The  season  being  too 
far  advanced  to  proceed  to  Quebec,  Jolliet  also 

--  i  ii  ifhwhiti 

*Jolliet's  Map  is  reduced  from  a  reproduction  in  Winsor:  "Cartier 
to  Frontenac." 


36  Starved  Rock 

tarried  there,  utilizing  the  delay  by  preparing  his 
report  and  enjoying  his  rest,  while  taking  part 
also  in  the  activities  going  on  always  in  connec- 
tion with  a  forest  mission.  Marquette's  weaker 
constitution  was  so  seriously  impaired  by  the  fa- 
tigues of  the  exploration  that  he  never  afterward 
became  a  well  man.  He  performed,  indeed,  all  the 
duties  of  his  priestly  office,  but  illness  followed  him 
so  relentlessly  that  it  was  not  until  the  following 
year  he  was  able  to  complete  his  report  and  send 
it  to  his  Father  Superior,  Dablon,  at  Quebec. 

Jolliet  reached  Quebec  to  report  to  the  Governor 
in  August,  1674 ;  but  when  within  sight  of  Montreal 
his  canoe  was  overturned  in  the  rapids  of  St.  Louis 
and  his  box  of  papers,  together  with  his  maps  and 
all  the  collections  of  his  journey  were  lost,  while  he 
himself  was  saved  only  after  having  lost  conscious- 
ness in  the  water.  Two  of  his  companions  were 
drowned.  It  is  due  to  this  accident  that  the  report 
of  Marquette  to  Father  Dablon  became  the  history 
of  the  discovery  of  the  Mississippi,  rather  than  that 
of  Jolliet,  chief  of  the  expedition.  Transmitted  by 
Dablon  to  Paris,  Marquette's  narrative  was  pub- 
lished in  an  abridged  and  altered  form  by  Thevenot 
in  1681,  accompanied  by  a  map  purported  to  have 
been  made  by  Marquette;  and  thus  by  force  of 
circumstances  Marquette's  name  was  given  a  prom- 
inence as  the  apparent  leader  of  a  voyage  of  dis- 


The  Discovery  37 

covery,  that  he  himself  least  of  all  expected  or 
would  have  desired  at  the  expense  of  his  friend 
and  fellow  traveler,  Jolliet,  who  was  the  official 
head  of  the  adventure. 

On  reaching  Quebec  Jolliet  made  a  verbal  report 
of  his  discovery  to  Governor  Frontenac.  This  re- 
port the  latter  at  once  sent  to  Colbert,  accompanied 
by  his  personal  estimate  of  the  extent  and  char- 
acter as  well  as  the  importance  of  the  discovery. 
This  statement  remained  buried  in  French  archives 
until  the  middle  of  the  last  century,  when  it  was 
first  published  in  Vol.  IX  of  the  New  York  Colonial 
Documents.  Jolliet  further  addressed  a  report  to 
Frontenac,  descriptive  of  the  flora  and  fauna  and 
the  natural  features  of  the  lands  he  had  seen  in  the 
West ;  but  this  document  also  was  hidden  from  the 
public  until  1872  when  it  was  first  published.* 

The  great  discovery  by  Jolliet  and  Marquette 
did  not  at  first  prompt  the  French  to  any  schemes 


*Jolliet's  subsequent  career  was,  of  course,  an  active  and  useful  one. 
In  1675  he  married  Francoise  Bissot,  daughter  of  a  rich  merchant,  who 
became  the  mother  of  Jolliet's  three  sons  and  four  daughters.  Four 
years  later  he  applied  for  a  trading  concession  in  the  "Illinois  country," 
but  it  was  refused  by  the  court  at  Paris,  on  the  ground  that  such  a 
project  was  not  then  advisable.  At  another  time  we  find  him  nobly 
protesting  against  the  sale  of  liquor  to  the  Indians,  which  he  character- 
ized as  a  crime  that  should  be  punished  with  death.  Again,  as  ad- 
ministrator of  his  father-in-law  Bissot's  estate,  he  visited  the  Hudson 
Bay  country,  reporting  on  his  return  that  he  had  found  the  English 
established  there,  and  recommending  that  if  they  were  not  at  once 
ejected  the  trade  of  France  would  be  ruined. 

It  was  not  until  about  1679  that  the  official  recognition  long  his  due 


38  Starved  Rock 

for  planting  colonies  in  the  rich  country  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,  and  a  plan  of  settlement  pro- 
posed by  Jolliet  was  rejected  by  the  Court  as 
premature.  It  was  only  when  the  activity  of  the 
English  in  New  York  menaced  the  French  fur 
trade  that  the  struggle  for  dominion  in  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley  and  the  career  of  La  Salle  began. 


came  to  Jolliet.  In  that  year  he  was  granted  possession  of  the 
Mingan  Islands,  along  the  north  shore  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence, 
to  which  in  1680  was  added  the  island  of  Anticosti,  the  deed  to  the 
latter  grant  expressly  stating  that  the  concession  was  made  in  recogni- 
tion of  Jolliet's  great  services  in  the  West.  Jolliet  proceeded  with  his 
family  to  Anticosti  where  he  built  a  warehouse  and  settled  down  to 
trade  and  to  engage  in  the  fisheries.  Being  a  hydrographer  also  he 
made  a  chart  of  the  St.  Lawrence  River.  In  1689  he  was  sent  to 
Mackinac,  on  order  of  Frontenac,  on  behalf  of  the  Jesuits,  to  an- 
nounce to  Durantaye,  the  commandant,  that  the  Hurons,  Ottawas,  and 
other  tribes  were  treating  with  the  Iroquois  and  had  sent  back  their 
prisoners  and  were  preparing  to  join  the  Iroquois  and  the  English 
with  their  warriors  to  act  against  the  French.  (Le  Clerq:  "First 
Establishment  of  the  Faith  in  New  France.")  His  family  continued  to 
reside  at  Anticosti  until  in  1690  his  property  was  burned  and  his  wife 
and  her  mother  taken  prisoners  by  Sir  William  Phipps,  when  the  latter 
was  on  his  way  to  unsuccessfully  attack  Quebec. 

Still  later  Jolliet  was  sent  to  explore  the  coast  of  Labrador,  which 
he  did  in  1694,  acting  as  official  hydrographer  in  succession  to  Franque- 
lin.  On  April  30,  1697,  he  was  granted  a  seignory  on  the  River 
Chaudiere,  still  called  by  his  name;  and  there  he  died  in  the  year  1700, 
leaving  behind  him  a  family  whose  posterity  still  honor  his  name  and 
look  with  pride  to  him  as  their  ancestor. 

Jolliet  was  assuredly  one  of  the  most  daring  of  the  explorers  of  the 
West,  an  industrious  and  honest  man  but  not  a  very  strong  character, 
perhaps.  As  we  have  seen,  he  was  one  whom  circumstances  con- 
tributed to  deprive  for  a  time  of  a  material  reward  and  for  a  longer 
period  of  his  just  fame  as  the  finder  of  the  Mississippi  instead  of  the 
mere  follower  of  the  priest,  the  saintly  Marquette,  who  would  have 
been  the  last  of  men  to  seek  so  great  renown  for  himself  at  the 
expense  of  his  friend,  and  who  would  have  deemed  a  commission  to 
find  the  "great  river"  or  to  found  an  empire  a  slight  honor  compared 
with  an  order  to  risk  all  to  preach  the  Gospel  to  the  Illinois. 


LA   SALLE   IN   ILLINOIS. 

Planting  strange  fruits  and  sunshine  on  the  shore 
I  make  some  coast  alluring,  some  lone  isle, 
To  distant  men  who  must  go  there  or  die. 

— Emerson. 

LA  SALLE 'S  EARLY  DISCOVERIES. 

After  Champlain  the  greatest  name  in  the  his- 
tory of  French  exploration  in  North  America  is 
that  of  Rene-Robert  Cavelier,  Sieur  de  la  Salle,  or, 
more  simply,  La  Salle,  as  he  will  be  known  for  all 
time.  Born  at  Rouen  in  1643,  like  many  another 
man  of  his  century  whose  name  has  become  linked 
with  the  fate  of  the  French  church  or  state  in  New 
France,  La  Salle  came  from  a  family  of  rich  burgh- 
ers and  merchants  who  lived  like  princes  rather 
than  as  men  of  the  people.  He  was  liberally  edu- 
cated and  became  especially  proficient  in  mathe- 
matics. An  earnest  Catholic  and  a  serious  youth, 
he  early  was  fascinated  by  that  magnificent  organ- 
ism, the  Society  of  Jesus,  and  for  a  time  he  was 
connected  with  the  order.  But  in  the  very  nature  of 
things  so  independent  a  spirit  as  La  Salle  could  not 
long  endure  what  to  him  must  have  been  the  chafing 
discipline  of  the  Society  nor  submit  to  the  abnega- 
tion of  self  which  that  discipline  required  and  com- 

39 


[This  picture  is  made  from  a  photograph  of  the  original  painting 
by  G.  P.  A.  Healey  for  the  Chicago  Historical  Society,  by  whose 
courtesy  it  is  here  published.  The  portrait  is  that  of  La  Salle  ap- 
pearing in  the  plate  printed  in  the  chapter  with  the  caption  "Kis- 
met," entitled  'The  Murther  of  Mons'r  de  La  Salle."  It  was  published 
by  Margry  in  his  "Memoires  et  Documents,"  etc.,  without  com- 
ment, and  is  of  questionable  value  as  a  portrait,  although  quite  gen- 
erally now  accepted  as  such.] 


La  Salle  in  Illinois  41 

pellecl ;  and  so  he  withdrew,  honorably  and  on  good 
terms,  we  may  be  sure,  but  withal  retaining  there- 
after an  inveterate  dislike  for  and  distrust  of  the 
Society  and  its  members. 

This  connection  having  under  the  law  of  the  time 
deprived  him  of  his  share  of  his  father's  estate,  he 
was  given  an  allowance  by  the  family  of  a  few  hun- 
dred francs  annually,  the  capital  of  which  was  paid 
to  him  in  1666 ;  and  with  this  meagre  pittance  he 
came  to  North  America,  at  the  age  of  twenty-three. 
Although  he  obtained  from  the  Seminary  of  St. 
Sulpice  of  Montreal  a  grant  of  land  on  Montreal 
Island  at  a  place  now  called  La  Chine,*  and  there 
set  up  as  a  sort  of  feudal  lord  and  trader,  in  the 
most  dangerous  spot  for  a  Frenchman  in  North 
America,  there  is  good  reason  for  believing  that  he 
had  other  and  more  far  reaching  projects  in  mind, 
and  that  the  La  Chine  establishment  was  but  a 
means  to  a  greater  end ;  and  when  a  band  of  Sene- 
cas,  his  guests  one  winter,  told  him  of  a  river  called 
the  Oyo  (Ohio)  that  rose  in  their  country  and  at  a 
distance  of  eight  moons'  journey  emptied  into  the 
sea,  "his  hour  had  come."  In  order  to  finance 
the  expedition  which  this  information  suggested, 
the  first  step  doubtless  in  the  career  he  had  mapped 
out  for  himself  before  leaving  Prance,  he  sold  his 


*  In  derision  of  La  Salle,  who  later  failed  as  an  explorer  to  solve 
the  geographical  problem  of  all  western  exploration — the  western  route 
to   China. 


42  Starved  Rock 

improvements  at  La  Chine  to  the  Seminary,  and 
having  obtained  official  authority  therefor  from 
Governor  Courcelle,  and  being  encouraged  thereto 
by  the  Intendant  Talon,  he  started  in  1669  with 
four  canoes  and  fourteen  men  in  search  of  the  Ohio. 
With  this  journey  this  narrative  has  no  special 
concern.  In  relation  to  it,  the  curious  reader  is 
referred  to  Parkman:  "  La  Salle  and  the  Dis- 
covery of  the  Great  West, ' '  and  to  Winsor  :  ' '  Car- 
tier  to  Frontenac."  That  La  Salle  discovered  and 
explored  the  Ohio,  at  least  to  the  falls  of  Louisville, 
is  not  now  doubted;  for  France  repeatedly  based 
her  claim  to  possession  of  the  interior  of  the  con- 
tinent upon  that  discovery ;  but  where  else  La  Salle 
was  during  the  two  years  of  his  absence  is  not  so 
clear.  It  is  claimed  that  during  this  time  he  saw 
both  the  Mississippi  and  the  Illinois  as  well  as  the 
Ohio;  but  all  is  uncertain.  Parkman  concludes 
that  the  evidence  does  not  support  a  claim  to  the 
discovery  of  the  Mississippi,  and  La  Salle  himself 
never  made  such  a  claim;  but  Parkman  says  La 
Salle  "discovered  the  Ohio  and  in  all  probability 
the  Illinois  also."*  At  any  rate,  in  all  his  sub- 
sequent movements  in  the  Illinois  country  La  Salle 
showed  perfect  familiarity  with  the  geography  of 
both  Lake  Michigan  and  the  water  routes  from  the 
lake  to  the  Illinois  River  itself,  even  before  Jol- 


*  Parkman  :    "La  Salle  and  the  Discovery  of  the  Great  West.' 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  43 

liet's  and  Marquette's  discoveries  had  become  gen- 
erally known. 

La  Salle  returned  to  Canada  in  1671  or  1672  and 
attached  himself  to  the  fortunes  of  Governor  Fron- 
tenac,  waiting  until  the  time  was  ripe  for  the  de- 
velopment of  his  plan. 

This  was  so  daring  in  conception  and  so  far 
reaching  in  its  political  scope,  that  one  can  readily 
see  how  La  Salle  might  acquire  a  reputation,  as 
he  did,  as  a  visionary,  when  he  talked  of  seizing 
an  unexplored  continent  in  order  to  antici- 
pate its  appropriation  by  another  people  with 
whom  the  French  in  Canada  had  thus  far  come  in 
contact  only  indirectly,  as  the  almoners  of  the 
Iroquois.  Frontenac  was  a  statesman.  At  least, 
he  could  see,  as  Talon  had  seen  before  him,  the 
political  wisdom  of  La  Salle's  design,  which  was 
no  less  than  to  reach  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi 
via  the  Illinois  (for  the  Iroquois  had  closed  the 
route  via  Chatauqua,  French  Creek  and  the  Alle- 
gheny to  the  Ohio,  also  a  less  feasible  waterway 
than  the  Illinois)  and  take  verbal  possession  of  the 
country.  Then  by  closing  the  mouth  of  the  river 
with  a  fort  and  by  placing  others  along  the  route 
from  Montreal  to  the  Gulf,  he  could  hold  the  in- 
terior against  all  invaders  and  thus  add  the  greater 
part  of  the  continent  to  the  possessions  of  Louis 
XIV.    in    America.      Eventually    the    center    of 


44  Starved  Bock 

French  dominion  in  North  America  could  be  trans- 
ferred from  the  then  bleak  and  inhospitable  Can- 
ada to  the  fertile  valley  of  the  Mississippi,  which 
by  agriculture  and  trade  would  sooner  or  later  be- 
come the  seat  of  a  flourishing  people.  It  was  a 
grand  and  eminently  practicable  conception  which 
not  many  years  after  La  Salle's  death  became 
the  policy  of  the  Paris  government,  with  what 
success  the  history  of  the  Franco-English  struggle 
in  America  in  the  eighteenth  century  tells  us. 

Eeturning  to  France  in  1674  La  Salle  unfolded 
his  great  project  at  the  court  of  Louis  the  Magni- 
ficent. He  found  ready  listeners  and  was  meas- 
urably successful.  As  a  reward  for  his  discovery 
of  the  Ohio,  La  Salle  was  ennobled ;  and  by  the  elo- 
quence of  his  pleading  for  his  great  project,  he  ob- 
tained possession  of  Fort  Frontenac  as  well  as 
liberal  grants  of  lands  adjoining,  together  with  ex- 
clusive trading  privileges  both  on  Lake  Ontario 
and  in  the  new  lands  of  the  Illinois  country  which 
he  was  to  explore  and  settle.  All  was  to  be  done  at 
his  own  individual  expense,  however. 

Having  established  himself  at  Fort  Frontenac 
(now  Kingston,  Ont),  La  Salle  began  his  work 
of  exploration  and  settlement  of  the  West  by  build- 
ing Fort  Conti  on  Niagara  River  to  control  that 
portage;  after  which,  in  the  summer  of  1679  he 
built  the  Griffin,  a  vessel  of  forty-five  tons  burden, 


La  Salle  In  Illinois 


45 


the  first  of  the  vessels  to  engage  in  what  has  since 
become  the  vast  commerce  of  the  Great  Lakes.  In 
this  vessel  on  August  7,  1679,  he  set  sail  for  Mich- 
ilimackinac  and  Green  Bay.  At  the  first  named 
place  he  established  a  trading  post  and  left  his 


The  Griffin.* 


lieutenant,  Henri  de  Tonty  and  about  twenty  men, 
with  instructions  to  proceed  along  the  eastern  shore 
of  Lake  Michigan  to  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Joseph 


*  The  Griffin  was  built  on  Little  Niagara  River,  at  a  point  just 
beyond  the  bend  of  the  river  above  La  Salle,  N.  Y.  It  was  between 
45  and  60  tons  burden;  and  the  correct  rig  of  the  vessel  was  prob- 
ably substantially  that  of  the  picture,  which  was  made  by  R.  P.  Joy 
of  Detroit,  who  found  the  original  in  a  French  book  attributed  to 
Hennepin,  published  in  1711.  At  least,  the  rig  is  historically  cor- 
rect, being  the  prevailing  one   of  the  period    (1679). 


46  Starved  Rock 

River,  while  lie  himself  proceeded  to  Green  Bay. 
Having  there  taken  on  a  load  of  furs,  he  ordered 
the  Griffin  to  proceed  to  Niagara  to  unload  her  rich 
cargo  and  then  to  return  with  supplies  to  the  St. 
Joseph  River,  while  he  himself  proceeded  along 
the  west  shore  to  the  same  place  with  fourteen  men, 
including  Father  Louis  Hennepin  and  two  friars, 
Zenobius  Membre  and  Gabriel  Ribourde;  for  La 
Salle,  a  zealous  Catholic,  although  no  friend  of  the 
Jesuits,  was  always  accompanied  by  holy  fathers, 
among  whom  he  had  no  more  admiring  and  faith- 
ful friend  than  Father  Membre. 

La  Salle  reached  the  mouth  of  the  St.  Joseph 
River  in  November,  in  advance  of  Tonty;  and 
while  waiting  for  the  latter  and  his  party  to  come 
up,  he  occupied  his  men,  who  were  anxious  to  pro- 
ceed before  winter  set  in,  by  building  here  a  fort 
and  station  buildings,  which  he  called  Fort  Miami. 
He  thus  secured  and  fortified  the  key  to  the  Illinois 
via  the  Kankakee  and  placed  the  third  of  his 
chain  of  forts  between  Fort  Frontenac  and  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  On  November  12  Tonty 
arrived,  bringing,  however,  only  half  of  his  origi- 
nal party  and  the  ominous  news  that  the  Griffin  had 
not  reached  Mackinac  and  had  not  been  heard  of 
after  leaving  Green  Bay.  And  La  Salle  waited 
with  dark  forbodings  in  his  heart. 

At  length,   no   Griffin  appearing,  nor  any  of 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  47 

Tonty's  stragglers  and  further  delay  being  impos- 
sible, La  Salle  attached  to  trees  written  instructions 
to  the  pilot  of  the  Griffin,  in  the  event  of  his  ar- 
rival; and  on  December  3,  with  twenty-nine 
Frenchmen  and  LeLoup,  a  Mohegan  hunter,  set 
out  for  the  Illinois  and  the  Mississippi.  At  about 
seventy  miles  above  the  fort,  near  the  site  of  the 
present  city  of  South  Bend,  Ind.,  they  found  the 
portage  from  the  St.  Joseph  to  the  Kankakee 
(Theakiki)  Eiver,  and  on  December  6  floated  their 
canoes  on  this  branch  of  the  Illinois  and  so  entered 
the  valley  of  the  Mississippi.  The  journey  was  a 
dreary  and  painful  one.  Ice  impeded  their  prog- 
ress through  a  country  that  everywhere  for  miles 
was  a  half-frozen  marshy  wilderness,  rarely  af- 
fording comfortable  camping  grounds,  while  the 
autumnal  prairie  fires  of  the  Indians  had  driven 
away  the  game ;  so  that  subsistence  itself  was  a  dif- 
ficult problem.  After  some  days  they  reached  the 
more  elevated  prairie  of  the  Illinois  country  and 
the  open  river ;  and  when  their  distress  from  hun- 
ger was  most  acute,  a  buffalo  mired  on  the  shore 
was  killed,  and  food  was  again  plenty. 

By  this  time  they  had  reached  the  junction  with 
the  Desplaines  and  were  on  the  broad  and  open 
river,  with  easy  paddling  until  they  came  to  the 
grand  rapids  of  the  Illinois  between  the  present 
town  of  Marseilles  and  the  city  of  Ottawa.    Then 


48  Starved  Rock 

they  passed  the  mouth  of  Fox  River,  called  by 
the  Indians  Pesticoui,  coming  soon  after  to  the 
isolated  and  striking  plateau  now  called  Buffalo 
Rock,  a  few  miles  beyond  which,  having  passed  the 
"lone  cliff"  now  called  Starved  Rock,  they  reached 
the  untenanted  huts  constituting  the  village  home 
of  the  Kaskaskias,  where  in  1675  Father  Marquette 
had  planted  his  mission  to  the  Illinois  and  which 
Father  Allouez,  his  successor,  had  abandoned  when 
he  heard  of  La  Salle's  approach,  attaching  him- 
self to  wandering  bands  of  Miamis  and  other  sav- 
ages during  their  winter  hunting. 

This  village  of  the  Kaskaskia  tribe  of  the  Illinois, 
called  by  the  French  La  Vantum,  lay  at  the  edge 
of  a  marshy  plain  upon  the  right  (north)  bank  of 
the  Illinois  River,  about  a  mile  to  the  south  and 
half  a  mile  west  of  the  present  village  of  Utica. 
Hennepin  says  there  were  in  the  village  at  that  time 
four  hundred  and  sixty  lodges,  arranged  in  rows 
and  built  like  long  narrow  arbors,  with  their  sides 
and  roofs  covered  with  thick  double  mats  of  rushes 
to  keep  out  the  wind  and  the  weather.  Each  hut, 
or  lodge,  had  five  or  six  fires,  each  fire  serving  for 
one  or  two  families,  thus  indicating  a  population 
of  four  to  five  thousand  souls.* 


♦Allouez  in  1677  found  but  351  lodges.  Marquette  in  1675  records 
that  he  there  addressed  500  chiefs  and  1,500  young  men  and  also  women 
and  children.  Father  Membre  in  1680  says  the  population  was  7,000 
to  8,000.     Franquelin,  1684,  says  about  6,000. 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  49 

It  was  now  the  end  of  the  year,  approaching  mid- 
winter, and  the  tribes  had  gone  to  their  winter 
hunting  grounds.  A  search  of  the  village  revealed 
the  corn  caches,  or  covered  storage  pits ;  and  urged 
by  his  great  need  therefor,  La  Salle  took  a  few 
bushels  of  c'orn,  although  he  well  knew  that  in  do- 
ing so  he  would  give  deep  offense.  He  left  pres- 
ents, however,  in  compensation,  and  hoped  to  make 
amends  otherwise  when  he  should  meet  the  owners. 

On  New  Year's  Day,  1680,  Father  Hennepin 
having  said  mass  and  in  an  address  extended  to  all 
the  good  wishes  of  the  day,  "que  je  pus/'  La  Salle 
resumed  his  journey.  After  four  days  they  came 
to  the  body  of  water  now  known  as  Peoria  Lake, 
called  by  the  Indians  Pimiteoui  ("a  place  of  many 
fat  beasts"),  near  the  lower  end  of  w7hich  they 
found  an  encampment  of  eighty  lodges  of  the  Ill- 
inois. The  Indians  were  taken  by  surprise  and 
thrown  into  a  panic  by  the  arrival  of  the  French, 
and  hastily  prepared  for  defense.  La  Salle  and  his 
men  boldly  landed  at  once,  but  passively  awaited 
the  event.  When  the  Indians  saw  there  was  no 
disposition  on  the  part  of  La  Salle  to  attack  them, 
they  offered  the  calumet  of  peace,  to  which  La  Salle 
responded  promptly ;  and  soon,  with  the  friars'  aid, 
confidence  was  restored  and  Indian  hospitality  of- 
fered and  accepted.  Presents  were  distributed  and 
apology  made  for  the  violation  of  the  village  caches. 


50  Starved  Rock 

Then  La  Salle  stated  his  intention  to  erect  a  fort 
among  them  and  to  make  a  "big  canoe"  to  descend 
to  the  sea.  He  expressed  also  his  desire  to  trade 
with  them  and  to  protect  them  from  the  Iroquois. 
The  Illinois  were  pleased  with  all  this ;  and  "feasts 
and  dances  consumed  the  day."* 

The  sinister  influences,  however,  that  seemed 
everywhere  and  at  all  times  to  hedge  La  Salle 
about  were  felt  even  here  and  at  once ;  for  this  day, 
that  promised  so  well,  had  not  ended  before  a  Mas- 
coutin  chief  named  Monso  appeared  with  several 
attendants  bearing  presents  for  the  Illinois;  and 
in  an  all-night  harangue,  laden  with  insinuations, 
roused  the  suspicions  of  the  Illinois.  Finally  he 
openly  denounced  La  Salle  as  a  spy  and  partisan  of 
the  Iroquois.  In  this  attack  La  Salle  believed  he 
saw  the  instigations  of  Allouez  the  Jesuit,  who  was 
in  the  neighborhood;  but  by  his  natural  skill  in 
finesse,  aided  by  his  knowledge  of  Indian  char- 
acter, he  was  able  to  restore  himself  to  the  confi- 
dence of  the  Illinois.  He  succeeded  less  with  his 
own  men,  however;  for  he  had  hardly  foiled  his 
enemies  among  the  savages  than  six  of  his  party 
deserted  him  in  the  night  and  fled  into  the  wilder- 
ness. This  defection  was  a  serious  and  alarming 
blow  to  La  Salle,  but  with  characteristic  fortitude 
and  assurance  he  proceeded  with  his  work. 


*Parkman:   "La  Salle,"  etc.;  Mason:  "The  Land  of  the  Illinois." 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  51 

Separating  his  men  from  the  Indian  camp,  on 
January  15  he  began  building  a  fort  on  a  low  hill  on 
the  left  bank  of  the  river  some  two  and  a  half  miles 
below  its  outlet  from  the  lake.  Within  this  en- 
closure he  erected  his  storehouse,  set  up  a  forge 
and  made  habitations  for  his  men,  thus  completing 
the  fourth  link  in  his  chain  of  forts,  or  stations,  be- 
tween Fort  Frontenac  and  the  Gulf  and  making 
the  first  establishment  of  white  men  in  the  Missis- 
sippi Valley.  This  fort  he  called  Crevecoeur 
(" broken  heart"),  a  name  whose  significance  in 
this  instance  is  open  to  various  interpretations. 

The  fort  completed,  La  Salle  began  work  on  the 
vessel  in  which  he  intended  to  descend  the  Missis- 
sippi. He  himself  and  two  others,  volunteers  (for 
his  sawyers  were  among  the  deserters) ,  began  cut- 
ting the  planks,  and  by  March  1  the  keel  of  a  vessel 
forty-two  feet  long  and  twelve  feet  of  beam  was 
laid.  But  as  the  craft  would  be  without  iron,  cor- 
dage or  sails,  of  which  the  loss  of  the  Griffin  had 
deprived  him,  La  Salle  undertook  to  go  himself  to 
Canada  for  these  necessary  articles. 

In  the  meantime  La  Salle  had  become  interested 
in  the  Sioux  and  other  Indians  of  the  Northwest, 
some  of  whom  had  wintered  near  him  on  the  Ill- 
inois ;  and  he  determined  to  send  a  party  to  explore 
their  country.  He  selected  for  this  expedition  two 
of  his  best  and  most  faithful  men,— one  Michael 


52  Starved  Rock 

Ako  (or  Accau,  or  Accault,  the  name  is  variously 
spelled),  a  native  of  Poitou,  whose  name  appears 
several  times  in  the  annals  of  this  neighborhood, 
and  Antony  Auguel.  Ako  he  appointed  as  leader, 
and  to  him  he  committed  a  quantity  of  goods  for 
trade,  and  directed  Father  Hennepin  to  accom- 
pany him  on  a  journey  which  the  Priest's  own 
narrative  has  made  famous.  This  expedition  left 
Crevecoeur  on  February  29,  1680 ;  and  on  the  fol- 
lowing day,  La  Salle,  accompanied  by  six  white 
men  and  his  Mohegan  hunter,  set  out  for  his  fort  at 
Frontenac,  leaving  Tonty  in  command  of  the  re- 
mainder of  his  men  at  the  fort. 

The  journey  was  one  of  exhausting  labor  and 
most  intense  bodily  discomfort.  The  ice  still  cov- 
ered the  river  and  the  flat,  marshy  valley  for  long 
stretches,  making  it  necessary  to  haul  the  canoes 
on  sleds;  and  there  was  almost  continuous  rain, 
with  sleet  and  snow,  that  delayed  them  for  days  to- 
gether. When  a  welcome  frost  came,  covering  the 
country  with  ice,  they  travelled  rapidly  on  snow- 
shoes,  and  by  March  10  they  again  came  to  the 
deserted  Indian  town  they  had  left  behind  them  on 
January  1.  Here  for  several  days  they  rested  in 
the  empty  lodges.  Here  too  La  Salle  met  the  Illi- 
nois chief  Chassagoac,  with  whom  he  bargained  for 
a  canoe  load  of  corn  from  the  caches,  which  he  sent 
by  two  of  his  men  to  Tonty.    La  Salle  took  further 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  53 

advantage  of  this  meeting  with  the  Illinois  chief 
to  unfold  to  the  friendly  savage  his  plans  of  trade, 
in  which  Chassagoac  saw  much  of  advantage  to  his 
people.  He  thereupon  pledged  his  influence  and 
aid  in  behalf  of  the  Frenchmen,  while  La  Salle  in 
turn  promised  to  use  his  good  offices  to  bring  about 
a  lasting  peace  with  the  Iroquois,  those  inveterate 
scourges  of  the  Western  wilderness  and  of  the 
Illinois  in  particular. 

It  was  at  this  time  that  La  Salle's  attention  was 
especially  drawn  to  the  isolated  sandstone  cliff 
standing  on  the  left  bank  of  the  river  about  a  mile 
above  the  Kaskaskia  village,  which  he  had  noticed 
a  few  weeks  before.  Impressed  by  its  natural 
strength  and  by  its  proximity  to  the  permanent 
village  of  the  Illinois,  he  resolved  to  change  his 
base  from  Crevecoeur  to  this  place;  and  when  on 
March  24  he  reached  his  Fort  Miami  and  found 
there  La  Chapelle  and  Le  Blanc,  two  men  whom 
he  had  in  November  sent  to  Mackinac  in  search  of 
the  Griffin,  he  ordered  them  to  join  Tonty  at 
Crevecoeur,  carrying  letters  directing  Tonty  to  ex- 
amine the  Rock  (LeRocher),  and,  if  he  thought 
best,  to  abandon  the  lower  fort  and  build  one  upon 
the  Rock.*    The  Rock  was  admirably  adapted  for 


*  The  late  Edward  G.  Mason,  "Chapters  from  Illinois  History," 
p.  81,  says :  "The  new  site  was  not  the  bold  bluff  .  .  .  known  in 
our  time  as  Starved  Rock.  At  this  period  the  great  Indian  village  was 
some  eight  miles  above  this  point,  and  the  high  rock  in  its   [the  vil- 


54  Starved  Rock 

La  Salle's  purpose.  In  the  hands  of  a  few  men,  it 
commanded,  as  could  no  other  place  along  the  en- 
tire river,  this  waterway  for  all  travel  from  the 
Lakes  to  the  Mississippi,  and  in  addition  to  being 
in  the  midst  of  a  fertile  country,  it  overlooked  the 
great  Indian  town  which  would  be  the  center  of  an 
immense  Indian  trade. 

Quitting  Fort  Miami,  La  Salle  and  his  men 
plunged  into  the  sodden  and  terrifying  wilderness 
of  southern  Michigan  to  make  his  way  to  Niagara. 
The  journey  to  Lake  Erie  was  one  of  the  most  des- 
perate character.  The  land  was  drowned  in  the 
floods  of  the  spring  " break  up,"  and  signs  of  hos- 
tile Indians  were  so  numerous  that  fires  were  al- 
ways hazardous.  In  a  few  days,  of  the  party  of  six 
only  La  Salle  and  the  Mohegan  were  in  traveling 
condition ;  so  that  when  at  last  they  reached  Detroit 
River  La  Salle  sent  two  of  them,  those  in  the  worst 
physical  condition,  to  Mackinac  as  the  nearest 
refuge,  while  with  the  others  he  pressed  on  to  his 
own  post  at  Niagara.  On  Easter  Monday  he  landed 
at  this  station,  at  or  near  the  spot  where  they  had 
built  the  Griffin.  Leaving  here  his  exhausted 
followers,  and  taking  with  him  three  fresh  men, 


lage's?]  neighborhood  referred  to  by  La  Salle  was  probably  that 
known  today  as  Buffalo  Rock,  or  one  of  the  bluffs  near  it."  This 
is  a  revival  of  the  blunder  of  Sparks;  and  the  statement  of  Mr.  Mason 
is  itself  the  best  of  evidence  that  Mr.  Mason  could  never  have  made  a 
personal  examination  of  the  localities  in  question,  as  his  knowledge  of 
the  topography  is  quite  inexact. 


La  Salle  In  Illinois  55 

La  Salle  resumed  his  journey,  and  on  May  6,  hav- 
ing crossed  Ontario  in  a  torrent  of  rain,  he  entered 
the  familiar  gates  of  his  own  Fort  Frontenac. 
"  During  sixty-five  days  he  had  toiled  almost  inces- 
santly, traveling  by  the  course  he  took  about  a 
thousand  miles  through  a  country  beset  with  every 
form  of  peril  and  obstruction;  'the  most  arduous 
journey,'  says  the  chronicler,  'ever  made  by 
Frenchmen  in  America.'  Such  was  the  Cavelier 
de  la  Salle.  In  him  an  unconquerable  mind  held 
at  its  service  a  frame  of  iron  and  tested  it  to  the 
utmost  of  its  endurance.  The  pioneer  of  western 
pioneers  was  no  rude  son  of  toil,  but  a  man  of 
thought,  trained  amid  arts  and  letters."* 


*  Parkman  :     "La  Salle,"  etc. 


A  YEAR  OF  DISASTER. 

The  oxen  were  plowing 
and  the  asses   feeding  beside  them 
and  the  Sabeans   fell  upon  them 
and   took   them   away. 

—Job. 

THE  WORK  OF  THE  IROQUOIS. 

Within  the  walls  of  Fort  Frontenac  La  Salle  was 
at  home ;  but  he  was  not  at  rest,  either  mentally  or 
physically.  At  his  Niagara  fort  he  had  faced  the 
fact  he  may  have  refused  to  admit,  that  the  Griffin 
was  lost  irretrievably,  with  its  rich  cargo  of  furs. 
He  learned  there  also  that  a  ship  from  France  with 
a  valuable  cargo  of  his  goods  and  twenty  men  for  his 
colony  had  been  wrecked  in  the  St.  Lawrence,  the 
goods  being  lost,  and  that  of  twenty  men  it  brought 
only  four  were  faithful  to  him.  At  Frontenac  he 
found  his  affairs  in  confusion.  His  agent  in  his 
absence  had  acted  in  bad  faith,  and  his  creditors 
were  about  to  seize  everything.  Yet  within  a  week 
at  Montreal  he  had  arranged  his  finances  and  pro- 
cured the  necessary  supplies  for  the  relief  of 
Tonty;  and  he  was  about  to  set  out  again  for  the 
Illinois  when  two  men  sent  by  Tonty  arrived  from 
the  Illinois  with  the  discouraging  news  that  short- 
ly after  he  had  left  Crevecoeur  all  but  four  of  his 

57 


58  Starved  Koch 

men  had  mutinied;  that  they  had  demolished  the 
fort  and  stolen  his  goods,  destroying  what  they 
could  not  carry  off ;  and  had  decamped.  And  we 
are  reminded  of  the  swift  succession  of  the  mis- 
fortunes that  fell  upon  Job  when  we  learn  that  this 
disaster  had  but  been  told  him  when  there  came  to 
La  Salle  two  of  his  men  in  hot  haste  from  Macki- 
nac and  the  Lakes  to  tell  him  that  the  Crevecoeur 
deserters,  with  other  scoundrels  of  the  woods,  had 
plundered  and  destroyed  his  Fort  Miami,  had 
seized  his  stock  of  furs  at  Mackinac,  and  had  just 
rifled  Fort  Conti  at  Niagara,  where  they  had 
divided  into  two  bands,  one  going  to  Albany,  then 
a  harborage  of  thieves  of  that  sort,  while  the  other 
party  of  twelve  men  were  even  now  on  their  way 
to  Frontenac  to  kill  him. 

Acting  with  characteristic  energy  La  Salle  inter- 
cepted this  latter  body  of  men,  and  captured  all 
but  two  who  on  resisting  arrest  were  shot.  The 
prisoners  were  taken  to  Frontenac  and  held  for 
sentence  by  the  governor,  while  La  Salle  turned 
again  to  the  succor  of  Tonty. 

On  August  6, 1680,  La  Salle  again  set  out  for  the 
Illinois,  accompanied  by  Francois  de  la  Forest,  as 
his  lieutenant,  and  twenty-four  men,  soldiers,  ar- 
tisans, voyageurs  and  laborers.  At  Mackinac  all 
was  hostile.  He  left  La  Forest  to  collect  the  pro- 
visions La  Salle  could  not  himself  buy  and  to  form 


A  Year  of  Disaster  59 

his  rear  guard,  while  he  himself  pushed  forward. 
On  November  4  he  reached  the  ruined  Fort  Miami, 
where  he  left  heavy  stores  and  a  guard  of  five  men 
to  wait  for  the  coming  of  La  Forest.  With  the  re- 
mainder of  the  men,  a  party  of  seven  all  told,  he 
hurried  on,  full  of  anxiety  and  apprehension  con- 
cerning Tonty,  of  whom  he  had  heard  nothing.  The 
route  was  by  the  Kankakee  trail;  but  unlike  the 
year  previous,  the  country  now  was  teeming  with 
game.  On  reaching  the  Illinois  they  stopped  for  a 
three  days'  hunt,  and  killed  twelve  buffalo  besides 
many  deer  and  waterfowl,  whose  meat  they  dried 
and  smoked.  The  men  were  elated  with  the  sport 
and  the  prospect  of  relieving  Tonty  and  his  com- 
panions with  ample  food. 

The  morale  of  the  men  was  excellent.  They  were 
in  fine  spirits;  but  as  they  approached  the  great 
town  of  the  Kaskaskias  the  oppressive  quiet  and 
apparent  absence  of  human  life  filled  them  with 
apprehension.  The  great  Rock  of  St.  Louis,  where 
La  Salle  had  expected  to  find  Tonty  in  a  new 
stronghold,  they  found  untenanted  and  undis- 
turbed, "its  primeval  crest  of  forest  still  over- 
hanging the  river."  Arriving  soon  after  at  the 
great  town  itself,  they  saw  on  all  sides  a  scene  of 
awful  carnage  and  desolation.  Everything  was  a 
waste.  The  lodges  had  been  burned  and  many  of 
the  charred  poles  that  had  formed  their  frames 


60  Starved  Rock 

now  carried  human  heads  half  picked  by  birds  of 
prey.  The  dead  were  strewn  over  the  plain;  for 
even  the  burial  place  of  the  village  had  been  defiled 
and  the  bodies  flung  down  from  their  scaffolds; 
while  noisome  birds  and  animals  feasted  on  the  hor- 
rid carrion.  La  Salle  knew  it  as  the  work  of  the 
Iroquois.*  The  conquerors  had  completed  their 
work  by  opening  and  destroying  the  corn  caches, 
whose  contents  they  had  burned  in  heaps  or  had 
scattered  half  burned  over  the  plain. 

But  nowhere,  either  among  the  ruins  of  the  vil- 
lage or  in  the  cold  camps  of  the  Iroquois,  could  any 
trace  be  found  of  Tonty.  Night  came  on,  so  bit- 
terly cold  that  although  fearful  they  were  com- 
pelled to  build  fires.  A  watch  was  set,  but  they 
were  not  disturbed.  All  night  long  La  Salle  pon- 
dered, trying  to  make  up  his  mind  what  to  do. 
When  morning  came  he  had  decided  to  go  on.  Two 
men  were  left  near  the  Rock  with  the  stores,  which 
were  hidden  in  the  caves  of  the  shore  rocks ;  while 
the  men  themselves  were  lodged  on  an  island  just 
above  the  Rock  and  warned  to  keep  themselves  con- 
cealed. '  Well  armed  and  provisioned,  they  awaited 
La  Salle's  return. 

In  descending  the  river  La  Salle  could  easily 
trace  the  flight  of  the  Illinois  and  the  pursuit ;  but 
nowhere  was  there  any  sign  of  Tonty  or  of  any 


*  Parkmax  :  "  La  Salle,"  etc. 


A  Year  of  Disaster  61 

white  man,  although  La  Salle  followed  the  river 
to  its  mouth.  Here  he  stopped,  putting  behind 
him  the  temptation  to  abandon  his  men  in  the  rear 
and  go  on  to  the  Gulf ;  and  having  left  letters  on 
trees  for  Tonty,  he  retraced  his  way.  At  the  Rock 
he  found  his  waiting  men,  and  then  the  united 
party  continued  to  ascend  the  river.  On  January 
6, 1681,  they  reached  the  junction  of  the  Kankakee, 
and  finding  there  no  sign  of  Tonty,  they  chose  the 
Desplaines,  or  ' '  Checagou, ' '  route.  Presently  they 
came  to  a  sort  of  rude  cabin  where  they  found  a 
piece  of  sawed  wood,  which  brought  the  relief  of 
believing  that  Tonty  had  escaped  the  horrors  of  the 
massacre  and  had  passed  that  way. 

Hiding  their  canoes  on  the  trail,  La  Salle  and 
his  men  went  across  the  country  to  Fort  Miami, 
which  they  at  last  reached  in  safety,  but  only  after 
a  terrible  march  over  a  timberless  country  covered 
with  a  great  fall  of  snow  so  light  they  could  not  use 
snow  shoes,  while  they  themselves  were  exposed  to 
piercing  cold  made  more  terrible  by  high  winds 
from  off  Lake  Michigan.  At  Miami  they  found  La 
Forest  and  all  the  men,  housed  in  a  rebuilt  fort  and 
surrounded  by  land  cleared  for  the  spring  plant- 
ing, while  the  timbers  and  planks  for  a  new  vessel 
for  the  lake  were  ready  to  be  put  together. 

But  no  word  of  Tonty.    Where  was  he  ? 

When    La  Salle    left    Crevecceur    for    Canada, 


62  Starved  Rock 

Tonty  remained  in  command  of  fifteen  men,  only  a 
few  of  whom  had  any  heart  in  the  enterprise  for 
which  they  were  engaged ;  and  when  the  two  men 
arrived  from  Port  Miami,  bringing  La  Salle's 
letters  and  the  news  of  the  loss  of  the  Griffin,  they 
were  all  ripe  for  revolt.  Taking  advantage  of  the 
absence  of  Tonty,  who  with  five  men  had  gone  to 
examine  the  Rock,  the  malcontents  destroyed  the 
Crevecoeur  fort  and  all  of  La  Salle's  goods  they 
could  not  carry  away,  and  disappeared.  Only  the 
faithful  Sieur  de  Boisrondet  and  La  Salle's  serv- 
ant, l'Esperance,  remained  loyal.  They  hastened 
to  Tonty  with  the  evil  news,  who  sent  four  of  the 
men  with  himself  in  parties  of  two  to  notify  La 
Salle.  Two  men,  as  we  have  seen,  reached  him ;  the 
others  did  not. 

Tonty 's  force  was  thus  reduced  to  three  men  and 
the  two  friars.  Although  the  Illinois  treated  them 
with  suspicion,  Tonty  boldly  took  up  his  abode  in 
the  village  to  await  there  La  Salle's  return.  The 
spring  and  summer  passed  without  event,  and  it 
was  not  until  September  that  the  terrible  tedium 
of  life  in  an  Indian  village  was  broken  by  a  storm 
that  brought  desolation  in  its  path.  The  crash 
came  like  lightning  out  of  a  clear  sky.  It  was  Sep- 
tember 10,  and  the  village  lay  in  the  lethargy  of  a 
warm  summer  day,  when  a  Shawanoe,  that  morn- 
ing a  departing  guest,  recrossed  the  river  in  haste 


A  Year  of  Disaster 


63 


with  the  news  that  he  had  seen  in  the  woods  of  the 
Vermilion  (Aramoni)  River  an  Iroquois  army 
coming  to  attack  them.  In  an  instant  the  village 
was  in  a  tumult ;  and  immediate  vengeance  seemed 
about  to  settle  upon  Tonty  and  his  men,  whom  the 
Illinois  accused  of  bringing  the  Iroquois  upon  ' 
them.     Tonty 's  address  and   courage   saved  his 


Scene  of  Tonty's  Encounter  with  Iroquois. 

(Approximate.) 

party ;  and  next  day  when  the  fight  began,*  in  the 
hope  of  saving  the  Illinois,  naturally  a  cowardly 
race,f  but  friends  of  La  Salle,  Tonty  undertook  to 
prevent  an  encounter  at  arms.    Laying  aside  his 


*The  scene  was  the  prairie  on  the  bluff  south  of  the  river,  at  the 
edge  of  the  woods  near  the  mouth  of  Vermilion  River. 
fPARjcMAN:     "La  Salle,"  etc. 


64  Starved  Rock 

gun  and  taking  a  necklace  of  wampum,  he  ad- 
vanced to  meet  the  Iroquois,  accompanied  by 
Boisrondet  and  a  young  Illinois  warrior.  "When 
I  was  within  gunshot, "  writes  Tonty,  "the  Iroquois 
shot  at  us,  seized  me,  took  the  necklace  from  my 
hand,  and  one  of  them  plunged  a  knife  in  my  breast, 
wounding  a  rib  near  the  heart.  However,  [a 
Seneca]  having  recognized  me,  they  carried  me  in- 
to the  midst  of  their  camp,  and  asked  what  I  came 
for.  I  gave  them  to  understand  that  the  Illinois 
were  under  the  protection  of  the  King  of  France 
and  the  governor  of  the  country,  and  that  I  was 
surprised  that  they  wished  to  break  with  the  French 
and  not  continue  at  peace.  At  this  time  skirmish- 
ing was  going  on,  on  both  sides,  and  a  warrior  came 
to  give  notice  that  the  Iroquois  left  wing  was  giv- 
ing way,  and  that  they  had  recognized  some  French- 
men among  the  Illinois,  who  had  shot  at  them.  On 
hearing  this  they  were  greatly  irritated  at  me,  and 
held  a  council  on  what  they  should  do  with  me. 
There  was  a  man  behind  me  with  a  knife  in  his 
hand,  who  every  now  and  then  lifted  my  hair. 
They  were  divided  in  opinion.  Tegantouki,  a 
chief,  desired  to  have  me  burnt.  Agoasto,  chief  of 
the  Onondagas,  wished  to  have  me  set  at  liberty 
as  the  friend  of  M.  de  la  Salle,  and  he  carried  his 
point.  They  agreed  that  in  order  to  deceive  the 
Illinois  they  should  give  me  a  necklace  of  porcelain 


A  Year  of  Disaster  65 

beads  to  prove  that  they  were  children  of  the  gov- 
ernor, and  ought  to  unite  and  make  a  good  peace. 
They  sent  me  to  deliver  this  message  to  the  Illi- 
nois. I  had  much  difficulty  in  reaching  them,  on 
account  of  the  blood  I  had  lost.  On  my  way  I  met 
the  Fathers  Ribourde  and  Membre  who  were  com- 
ing to  look  after  me.  We  went  together  to  the 
Illinois,  to  whom  I  reported  the  sentiments  of  the 
Iroquois  toward  them,  adding,  however,  that  they 
must  not  altogether  trust  them.7'* 

The  Illinois  then  returned  to  their  village  which, 
owing  to  the  presence  and  arrogance  of  the  Iro- 
quois, the  timid  that  night  burned,  taking  advan- 
tage of  the  confusion  of  the  fire  to  recover  their 
women  and  children  from  an  island  where  they  had 
been  placed  and  to  steal  away  down  the  river,  while 
the  Iroquois  took  possession  of  the  ruins  and  en- 
trenched themselves  there. 

Two  days  later  the  Iroquois  proposed  a  peace ; 
but  as  it  was  a  transparent  pretext,  Tonty  advised 
the  Illinois  to  get  away  as  quickly  and  as  far  as  pos- 
sible, which  they  did.  Still  later  the  Iroquois  eager 
to  fall  upon  the  Illinois  but  not  daring  to  do  so 
with  Tonty  about,  went  to  him  with  presents  of 
skins  to  induce  (and  also  to  threaten)  him  to  leave 
at  once;  but  Tonty  rejected  the  gifts  with  con- 
tempt, whereupon  the  Iroquois  peremptorily  or- 


*  Tonty  :    "Memoir  of  1693." 


66  Starved  Bock 

dered  him  to  leave.  Being  unable  to  do  anything 
more  for  the  Illinois,  Tonty  obeyed.  After  the 
French  had  departed  up  the  river,  the  Iroquois 
completed  the  ruin  of  the  village,  desecrated  the 
graves  of  the  Illinois  and  started  in  pursuit  of  the 
fugitives  on  the  river.  Those  in  flight  suffered 
comparatively  little,  but  they  were  literally  driven 
out  of  the  country.  The  kindred  tribe  of  Tama- 
roas,  however,  who  for  some  reason  did  not  try  to 
get  away,  were  slaughtered  in  their  village,  near 
the  mouth  of  the  Illinois,  with  terrible  cruelties 
and  burnings. 

Tonty  and  his  friends  left  the  ruined  village  on 
September  18,  all  in  one  poor  canoe  and  with  only 
scanty  supplies  of  provisions  and  ammunition  to 
reach  succor  on  the  Lakes.  They  had  traveled 
until  about  noon  of  the  following  day  when  an  ac- 
cident to  the  canoe  compelled  a  long  halt,  during 
which  Father  Ribourde,  in  spite  of  Tonty 's  warn- 
ings, retired  apart  to  say  his  breviary  and  did  not 
return,  nor  was  he  ever  found.  It  was  learned  aft- 
erwards that  he  was  murdered  by  a  wandering 
band  of  Kickapoos— coyotes  gleaning  on  the  trail 
of  the  wolfish  Iroquois.  "So  perished  the  first 
martyr  upon  Illinois  soil,  Gabriel  de  la  Ri- 
bourde."* 


♦Gabriel  de  la  Ribourde  was  the  only  son  and  heir  of  a  gentleman 
of  Burgundy.     He  was  noted  in  France  as  in  Canada  for  his  piety 


A  Year  of  Disaster  61 

Unable  to  find  Father  Ribourde,  the  little  party 
of  five  went  on  up  the  Illinois.  At  the  junction 
with  the  Kankakee  they  unfortunately  chose  the 
Chicago  route,  and,  believing  La  Salle  to  be  dead, 
left  no  sign  of  their  passing  that  way.  As  the  win- 
ter came  on  the  men  suffered  more  and  more  from 
sickness,  cold,  hunger  and  privation  of  every  kind, 
and  it  was  not  until  in  December  that  they  were 
rescued  from  certain  death  by  an  accidental  meet- 
ing with  Indians  near  Sturgeon  Bay  in  Wisconsin 
and  taken  to  a  Pottawatomie  village,  where  both 
the  Indians  and  some  resident  Frenchmen  nursed 
Tonty  back  to  life  and  health.  Father  Membre 
proceeded  after  resting  to  the  St.  Xavier  (De 
Pere)  Mission  and  reported  the  details  of  a  jour- 
ney comparable  in  toil  and  suffering  only  to  that 
which  La  Salle  himself  had  made  across  Michigan 
the  previous  winter. 


and  saintly  devotion  to  the  mission  cause,  for  which  he  sacrificed 
every  thing — home,  friends,  wealth,  clerical  position,  his  life.  He  was 
sixty-four  years  old. — Mason  :     "Chapters  from  Illinois  History." 


*V"X 


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LA  SALLE'S  COLONY 

omdiellilkiois, 

FROM  THE  MAP  OF  FRANQUEUN, 
1684. 


IV* 


-x  /? 


^*, 


V 


McUoagamC 


tQ  T&  cevogane 


A  YEAR  OP  SUCCESS. 

With  aching  hands  and  bleeding  feet, 
We  dig  and  heap,  lay  stone  on  stone; 

We  bear  the  burden  and  the  heat 
Of  the  long  day  and  wish  'twere  done. 

Not  till  the  hours  of  light  return 

All  we  have  built  do  we  discern. 

— Matthew  Arnold. 

LA  SALLE  FOUNDS  HIS  COLONY. 

La  Salle  spent  the  winter  of  1680-81  at  his  Fort 
Miami,  intent  upon  rebuilding  his  broken  fortunes. 
"  There  is  something  almost  touching  the  super- 
natural in  the  courage  and  resolution  of  La  Salle," 
says  Dunn.*  "  At  that  rude  fort  on  the  bank  of  the 
St.  Joseph,  in  the  discomforts  of  a  severe  winter, 
hundreds  of  miles  from  the  French  settlements,  the 
faithful  Tonty  carried  captive,  killed  or  a  fugitive, 
he  knew  not  which,  his  remaining  comrades  dis- 
heartened, his  colony  swept  from  the  face  of  the 
earth,  his  means,  dissipated  by  disasters  of  flood 
and  field,  this  man  calmly  reconstructed  his  plans 
and  prepared  to  renew  his  enterprise  on  a  more  ex- 
tended basis  than  before." 

First  of  all,  he  had  to  put  an  end  to  the  incursions 
of  the  Iroquois— not  a  simple  matter  by  any  means. 
For  the  Iroquois  were  moved  by  more  than  their 

*Dunn:     "Indiana"   (Am.  Commonwealth  Series),  p.  26-7. 

69 


70  Starved  Rock 

congenital  bloodthirstiness  to  those  fierce  on- 
slaughts that  had  made  their  name  a  terror  in  the 
West.  By  their  contract  with  the  whites  they  had 
acquired  many  new  wants  which  only  the  white 
man  could  satisfy,  while  the  game,  under  the  pres- 
sure of  more  systematic  commercial  hunting,  had 
begun  to  be  scarcer  and  skins  harder  to  obtain,  mak- 
ing it  necessary  therefore  for  them  to  control  wider 
hunting  grounds  in  order  to  get  the  peltries  that 
their  craving  for  liquor  and  their  need  of  ammu- 
nition and  other  goods  demanded.  Hence  the 
widening  area  of  human  desolation  wrought  by 
those  scourges  of  the  wilderness,  which  now  had 
extended  from  the  St.  Lawrence  to  the  Ohio  and 
from  the  Hudson  to  the  Mississippi. 

Unless,  therefore,  these  raids  could  be  stopped, 
La  Salle's  enterprise  in  the  Illinois  country  would 
come  to  nothing  but  ruin.  He  proposed  then,  to 
unite  the  western  tribes  in  a  confederacy  of  de- 
fense against  the  Iroquois  and  to  colonize  them  all 
around  or  near  to  his  Illinois  base,  which,  as  we 
have  seen,  he  intended  to  make  at  the  Rock.  There, 
with  the  flag  of  France  over  all,  he  hoped  to  hold 
the  Iroquois  in  check  and  establish  both  a  profit- 
able trading  station  and  a  permanent  colony  of 
Frenchmen,  the  outlet  of  whose  activities  he  would 
make  at  the  Gulf  of  Mexico  and  not  on  the  St. 
Lawrence. 


A  Year  of  Success  71 

The  issue  of  recent  Indian  wars  in  the  east  fa- 
vored him;  for  near  Fort  Miami,  as  he  found  on 
his  return,  there  were  the  huts  of  twenty  to  thirty 
Abenakis  and  Mohegans,  fugitives  from  Puritan 
victors  in  King  Philip 's  War.  These  readily  allied 
themselves  with  La  Salle,  yielding  him  "the  love 
and  admiration  he  rarely  failed  to  command  from 
this  hero-worshiping  race,"*  and  making  him 
their  leader.  One  after  another  the  Shawanoes  and 
Miamis,  who  also  had  suffered  from  the  Iroquois, 
joined  the  league  and  attached  themselves  to  La 
Salle.  In  March,  1681,  then,  with  La  Forest  as  his 
lieutenant,  he  set  out  for  the  great  town  of  the  Ill- 
inois in  the  hope  that  the  occupants  had  begun  to 
return  to  it  and  could  be  won  over  to  his  plans.  On 
the  way  thither  he  encountered  a  band  of  Foxes,  or 
Outagamies,  of  Green  Bay,  from  whom  he  learned 
the  fate  of  Tonty  and  also  that  Hennepin  and  Ako 
had  returned  from  among  the  Sioux— news  that 
gave  him  peculiar  delight. 

At  the  ruined  town  he  met  a  band  of  Illinois,  first 
of  the  returning  fugitives,  to  whom  he  gave  pres- 
ents and  whom  he  urged  to  make  peace  with  the 
Miamis  in  the  interest  of  the  common  defense 
against  the  Iroquois.  He  had  sent  La  Forest  to 
Mackinac  to  hold  Tonty  until  he  could  meet  him 
there  in  person;  and  having  completed  his  work 


*  Parkman  :     "La  Salle,"  etc. 


72  Starved  Roch 

among  the  Illinois,  he  returned  to  Port  Miami; 
and  later  at  the  Miami  village  at  the  St.  Joseph 
portage,  he  was  able  to  discomfit  certain  Iroquois 
spies  and  cement  his  league  by  a  formal  treaty  with 
the  tribes,  that  left  him  free  to  proceed  with  his 
great  enterprise  of  finding  the  mouth  of  the  Missis- 
sippi and  establishing  his  colony  on  the  Illinois. 

First,  it  was  necessary  to  go  to  Canada.  At  Mac- 
kinac he  met  Father  Membre  and  Tonty,  as  one 
might  meet  those  who  had  returned  from  the  grave ; 
and  together  all  went  to  La  Salle 's  Fort  Frontenac 
and  thence  to  Montreal.  For  a  third  time  La  Salle 
had  to  pacify  his  creditors  and  dicker  for  more 
credit  and  supplies,  in  all  of  which,  with  the  aid 
of  Barrios,  Count  Frontenac 's  secretary,  and  the 
support  of  a  wealthy  relative,  in  whose  favor  La 
Salle  made  his  will,  he  was  entirely  successful. 
Then  with  Tonty,  Father  Membre,  about  thirty 
Frenchmen  and  more  than  a  hundred  Indians— 
Shawanoes,  Abenakis  and  others  from  New  Eng- 
land—he again  started  for  the  Illinois,  reaching 
Fort  Miami  in  November,  1681. 

A  delay  here  of  about  a  month  gave  all  a  needed 
rest  before  the  great  Mississippi  quest  began.  The 
start  was  made  on  December  21,  1681,  the  entire 
party  consisting  of  La  Salle,  Tonty,  D'Autray, 
Father  Membre,  twenty-three  Frenchmen  and  In- 
dians, with  their  squaws  and  children,  in  all  fifty- 


A  Year  of  Success  73 

four  people.  On  the  day  named,  Tonty  and  Father 
Membre,  with  a  portion  of  the  company,  set  out 
for  Chicago  River.  La  Salle  and  the  others  fol- 
lowed a  few  days  later.  They  found  Illinois  River 
closed  with  ice ;  and  the  canoes  and  luggage  were 
therefore  placed  on  sleds  which  were  drawn  over 
the  ice  and  snow  for  a  hundred  miles,  or  until  open 
water  was  reached  below  Peoria  Lake.  Then  all 
took  to  the  canoes.  They  entered  the  Mississippi 
on  February  6,  1682.  On  April  6  they  arrived  at 
the  Mississippi  delta,  where  the  great  river  divided 
itself  into  three  broad  channels.  The.  command 
was  then  divided  into  three  parties,  led  respectively 
by  La  Salle,  Tonty  and  D'Autray,*  all  of  whom 
reached  the  Gulf.  Later  they  united  on  a  spot  of 
dry  ground  just  above  the  main  mouth  of  the  river, 
where  a  column  was  erected  bearing  the  arms  of 
France  and  the  inscription:  " Louis  Le  Grand, 
Roy  de  France  et  de  Navarre,  regne ;  le  Neuvieme 
Avril,  1682."  The  Te  Deum  was  chanted;  and  La 
Salle  in  a  formal  proclamation  took  possession  of 
the  river  and  all  the  lands  it  drained  in  the  name 
of  the  King.  Then  all  chanted  the  grand  hymn  of 
the  Vexilla  Regis,— 


*  As  D'Autray's  name  does  not  again  appear  except  incidentally  in 
this  narrative,  it  may  be  said  that  this  "always  very  faithful  and  brave" 
officer  settled  on  lands  near  the  Rock,  granted  him  by  La  Salle.  He 
served  with  Tonty  in  the  war  of  1687.  In  the  spring  of  1688,  after 
escorting  a  convoy  to  Fort  Frontenac,  he  was  murdered  by  the  Iroquois 
while  returning  to  his  Illinois  home. 


74  Starved  Bock 

The  banners  of  Heaven's  King  advance, 
The  mystery  of  the  Cross  shines  forth; — 

and  when  all  was  over  "the  realm  of  France  had 
received  on  parchment  a  stupendous  accession— all 
by  virtue  of  a  feeble  human  voice,  inaudible  at  half 
a  mile."* 

La  Salle  had  thus  achieved  an  everlasting  name 
and  realized  some  portion  of  his  magnificent  vision 
of  empire.    It  remained  to  accomplish  the  rest. 

The  return  to  the  Illinois  was  slow ;  and  when  he 
had  again  reached  what  is  now  known  as  the  Chick- 
asaw Bluffs  (Memphis),  he  became  too  ill  to  travel 
further,  and  thereupon  rested  at  a  fort  called  Prud- 
homme,  built  while  descending  the  river.  Tonty 
was  dispatched  in  advance  to  Mackinac  to  send  to 
Canada  the  news  of  the  issue  of  the  journey,  and 
then  to  return  to  the  Illinois.  La  Salle  himself 
was  able  to  reach  Fort  Miami  in  August  and  Mack- 
inac in  September. 

It  had  been  La  Salle's  intention  to  proceed  at 
once  to  France  to  bring  out  a  colony  to  take  posses- 
sion of  and  to  hold  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi ; 
but  his  illness  and  rumors  of  a  raid  into  the  West 
by  the  Iroquois  put  that  plan  out  of  the  question 
for  the  immediate  present ;  and  he  turned  back  to 
the  Illinois,  having  sent  Father  Membre  to  Europe 
in  his  stead  to  make  known  his  great  discovery  to 


*  Parkman  :    "La  Salle,"  etc. 


A  Year  of  Success  75 

the  King  at  Paris.  Father  Membre  arrived  at  Que- 
bec just  in  time  to  sail  for  France  on  November 
17  in  the  same  ship  that  carried  Count  Frontenac 
also  back  to  his  native  land,  the  latter  having  been 
relieved  of  the  governorship  by  LeFebvre  de  la 
Barre.  Of  this  last  and  greatest  misfortune,  the 
departure  of  his  only  official  friend  in  Canada,  La 
Salle  at  that  moment  happily  knew  nothing. 

In  pursuance  of  his  plans,  therefore,  La  Salle, 
in  December,  1682,  with  Tonty  and  his  men,  went 
from  Fort  Miami  to  the  Rock  and  there  entrenched 
himself,  cutting  away  the  forest  that  covered  the 
top  and  building  a  storehouse  and  dwellings  with 
the  timbers,  encircling  all  with  a  palisade  of  logs 
drawn  up  from  the  forest  below.  The  stronghold 
thus  made  he  named  Fort  St.  Louis.  And  this 
was  the  first  permanent  settlement  of  the  white 
race  made  in  the  Mississippi  Valley.*     . 

During  the  winter  La  Salle's  Indian  allies  be- 
gan to  gather  about  the  Rock,  finding  in  the  com- 
mander at  Fort  St.  Louis  a  refuge  and  a  defense 
from  the  Iroquois ;  and  when  the  spring  and  sum- 
mer had  come  again,  the  "Rock  was  indeed  like  a 
veritable  feudal  castle,  from  which  La  Salle  looked 
down  upon  a  concourse  of  wild  human  life.  Lodges 
of  bark  and  rushes,  or  cabins  of  logs,  were  clustered 
on  the  open  plain  or  along  the  edges  of  the  border- 

*Monette:     "History  of  the  Mississippi  Valley." 


76  Starved  Rock 

ing  forests.  Squaws  labored,  warriors  lounged  in 
the  sun,  naked  children  whooped  and  gamboled  on 
the  grass.  Beyond  the  river,  a  mile,  or  a  little  more, 
on  the  left,  the  banks  were  studded  once  more  with 
the  lodges  of  the  Illinois,  who,  to  the  number  of 
six  thousand,  had  returned  to  their  favorite  dwell- 
ing place.  Scattered  along  the  valley,  among  the 
adjacent  hills,  or  over  the  neighboring  prairie, 
were  the  cantonments  of  half  a  score  of  other 
tribes,  or  fragments  of  tribes,  gathered  under  the 
protecting  aegis  of  the  French:  Shawanoes  from 
the  Ohio ;  Abenakis  from  Maine,  Miamis  from  the 
sources  of  the  Kankakee,  with  others  whose  bar- 
barous names  are  hardly  worth  the  record.  Nor 
were  these  La  Salle's  only  dependents.  By  the 
terms  of  his  patent  he  had  seigniorial  rights  over 
this  wild  domain ;  and  now  he  began  to  grant  it 
out  in  parcels  to  his  followers."* 

At  Fort  St.  Louis  La  Salle  seemed  to  feel  that 
his  long  wanderings  were  at  an  end.f  The  seat  of 
his  seigniory  would  be  here;  and  he  had  only  to 
surround  himself  with  Frenchmen  to  realize  his 
dream  of  seeing  them  and  his  Indian  friends  united 
in  joint  agricultural  and  commercial  enterprise. 
The  land  itself  invited  such  enterprise.  La  Salle 
often  spoke  of  the  Illinois  as  a  terrestrial  paradise. 


*  Park  man  :     "La  Salle,"  etc. 

f  Mason  :     "Chapters  of  Illinois  History,"  pt.  1. 


A  Year  of  Success  77 

Tonty,  a  man  of  few  words  and  not  given  to  ex- 
aggeration, says  it  was  as  charming  a  country  as 
one  anywhere  might  see— "a  great  plain  adorned 
with  trees  and  abounding  in  strange  fruits.' '  It 
was  a  hunter's  paradise,  alive  with  bison;  deer 
grazed  in  great  herds,  like  flocks  of  sheep ;  and  there 
were  land  and  water  fowl  without  number.  Father 
Membre  also  speaks  of  the  River  Seignelay,  as  he 
calls  the  Illinois,  as  very  beautiful  and  of  all  the 
country  along  the  river  as  charming  in  its  aspect. 
"And  it  was  with  the  feeling  that  they  had  come 
to  the  garden  of  the  earth  that  La  Salle's  retain- 
ers began  their  preparations  for  a  feudal  establish- 
ment within  its  borders,  after  the  pattern  of  those 
of  the  old  world. '  '* 

The  names  of  twenty  or  more  of  those  whom  La 
Salle  thus  encouraged  to  make  clearings  and  to 
plant  crops,  grantees  of  his  lands  in  the  Illinois, 
are  preserved  in  the  records  of  the  Superior  Coun- 
cil of  Quebec  and  are  given  in  part  by  Mason  as 
follows:  Michael  Dizy,  Riverin,  Pierre  Chenet, 
Frangois  Pachot,  Chan  j  on,  Francois  Hazeur, 
Louis  Le  Yasseur,  Mathieu  Marlin,  Frangois  Char- 
ron,  les  Sieurs  D'Autray,  d'  Artigny  and  La  Ches- 
naye,  Jacques  de  Faye,  Pierre  La  Vasseur,  Michael 
Guyon,  Poisset,  Andrede  Chaulne,  Marie  Joseph 
le  Neuf,  Michael  de  Grez  Philipes  Esnault,  Jean 


*  Mason  :    Ibid. 


78 


Starved  Bock 


Petit,  Rene  Fezeret,  the  Sieurs  Laporte,  Louvigny 
and  de  St.  Castin,  Francois  de  la  Forest,  Henry  de 
Tonty,  and  the  Jesuit  Fathers. 

La  Salle  in  a  memoir  addressed  to  the  Minister 
of  the  Marine  reports  the  total  number  of  the  In- 
dians around  Fort  St.  Louis  at  this  time  at  about 
four  thousand  warriors,  or  twenty  thousand  souls. 
His  diplomacy  had  been  crowned  with  a  marvel- 
ous success,  due,  first,  to  the  Iroquois  and  the  uni- 
versal terror  which  they  inspired ;  and  next  to  his 
own  skillful  address  and  unwearied  energy.* 


*  Parkman  :     "La  Salle,"  etc. 


Taking  Possession  of  Louisiana. 

[From    "Wisconsin"   in    "Stories   of   the   States."] 


KISMET. 

The  sequel  of  to-day  unsolders  all 
The  goodliest  fellowship  of  famous  Knights 
Whereof  this  world  has  record.    Such  a  sleep 
They  sleep — the  men  I  loved. 

— Tennyson:  "Morte  d' Arthur." 

FAILURE  AND  DEATH. 

In  spite  of  difficulties  and  hindrances  which  to 
other  men  would  have  seemed  insurmountable,  La 
Salle  had  succeeded,  and  the  corner  stone  of  a  new 
empire  had  been  laid.  It  only  remained  to  rear 
the  superstructure  on  La  Salle's  foundation.  "His 
colony  had  sprung  up,  however,  in  a  night ;  might 
not  a  night  suffice  to  disperse  it?"  Its  permanence 
depended,  first  of  all,  at  this  time,  upon  the  good 
will  and  co-operation  of  the  government  at  Que- 
bec. Unfortunately,  Frontenac  had  been  recalled 
and  La  Barre  in  Canada  " reigned  in  his  stead." 

No  sooner  had  La  Salle  become  seated  at  Fort 
St.  Louis  and  La  Barre  at  Quebec  than  La  Salle 
began  to  realize  that  he  no  longer  had  a  real  friend 
in  official  or  commercial  Canada;  but  rather  that 
all  was  hostile  to  him  and  his  great  purpose.  La 
Barre  was  hopelessly  avaricious,  narrow  minded 
and  absolutely  without  capacity  as  a  statesman. 
He    began    his    administration    with    enmity    in 

79 


La  Salle. 


[The  above  portrait  is  said  by  Winsor,  "Narrative  and  Critical 
History,"  to  be  based  on  an  engraving  preserved  in  the  library  of 
Rouen,  entitled  "Cavilli  de  la  Salle  Francois,"  and  is  the  only  picture 
of  La  Salle,  except  one,  a  small  vignette,  published  by  Gravier,  which 
shows  the  face  of  a  slighter  man  than  is  here  indicated  and  one  of 
more  spiritual  cast  of  countenance  than  the  above.] 


Kismet  81 

thought  and  deed  toward  La  Salle,  whose  men  sent 
from  the  Illinois  for  supplies  and  ammunition  for 
the  Fort,  a  government  as  well  as  private  station, 
were  prevented  from  returning;  whose  fur  car- 
riers were  plundered  or  encouraged  to  plunder 
him;  whose  supplies  were  detained  in  Canada  or 
stolen  on  the  way.  In  spite  of  pleadings  and  pro- 
tests and  devices  to  win  La  Barre  's  good  will,  La 
Salle  everywhere  found  impediments  placed  in  his 
way  by  that  official  and  by  the  Jesuit  Fathers.  At 
Paris  also  his  discoveries  were  belittled  by  La 
Barre,  his  acts  and  motives  misrepresented  and 
his  character  libeled.  The  governor  even  went  so 
far  as  to  encourage  the  Dutch  at  Albany,  in  their 
intrigues  with  the  Iroquois,  to  renew  the  war  on 
the  Illinois,  solely  to  embarrass  La  Salle,  notwith- 
standing the  evils  such  a  war  might  bring  to  Can- 
ada. Finally,  having  cut  off  the  post  on  the  Illi- 
nois from  all  supplies,  La  Barre  even  dared  to 
seize  La  Salle's  Fort  Frontenac  and  rob  it  of  its 
stores  which  he  sold  for  his  own  and  the  official 
ring's  private  benefit;  and  in  various  other  ways 
La  Barre  made  La  Salle's  continued  occupation  of 
the  Illinois  difficult  to  impossible. 

Early  in  the  autumn  of  1683,  therefore,  finding 
his  position  no  longer  tenable  under  the  circum- 
stances, La  Salle  left  Tonty  in  command  at  Fort 
St.  Louis  and  started  for  Quebec  to  sail  for  France, 


82  Starved  Rock 

in  order  to  organize  a  colony  which  should  pro- 
ceed under  his  leadership  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mis- 
sissippi and  there  make  a  settlement  which  should 
command  the  outlet  of  the  valley  and  become  the 
entrepot  of  its  commerce.  Thus  La  Salle  hoped 
to  free  himself  and  the  Illinois  from  their  peren- 
nial menace,  the  provincial  government  at  Quebec. 

On  his  way  eastward,  at  a  fort  he  had  built  at 
Chicago,  La  Salle  met  the  Chevalier  de  Baugis 
with  his  escort,  who  by  command  of  La  Barre  was 
then  on  his  way  to  Fort  St.  Louis  to  take  command 
of  the  post.  La  Salle  was  furious ;  but  he  con- 
trolled his  wrath  and  gave  De  Baugis  letters  to 
Tonty,  directing  the  latter  to  yield  the  command 
gracefully  but  to  remain  as  his  agent  in  charge 
of  his  personal  effects  and  representative  of  his 
interests  at  the  Rock. 

It  was  on  September  1,  1683,  only  a  few  days 
after  receiving  La  Barre 's  order  to  surrender  his 
Fort  to  De  Baugis,  that  La  Salle,  while  resting  at 
his  Chicago  station,  wrote  the  letter  to  Antoine 
Brossard,*  which  proved  to  be  his  farewell  mes- 
sage to  his  faithful  friends  at  the  Rock,  and  which 
is  paraphrased  in  translation  by  Mason  as  fol- 
lows :f 


*  Brossard  was  a  member  of  La  Salle's  Mississippi  expedition.  The 
letter,  Mason  says,  was  preserved  by  Brossard  and  his  descendants 
until  in  1895,  when  it  came  to  sale  at  Montreal,  it  was  purchased  by 
him  as  Secretary  of  the  Chicago  Historical  Society,  in  whose  keeping  it 
now  is. 

t  Mason  :    "Land  of  the  Illinois." 


Kismet  83 

"  Beginning  with  an  expression  of  gratitude  to 
his  people  at  the  Rock  for  their  fidelity,  he  prom- 
ises to  reward  them  therefor  as  soon  as  he  shall 
have  scattered  the  little  storm,  as  he  hopes  to  do. 
He  tells  them  that  Holland*  is  awaiting  him  at  Mis- 
silimackinac  with  a  good  cargo,  and  that  he  is  tak- 
ing there  with  him  La  Fontaine,  La  Violette,  the 
Sieur  d'  Autray  and  the  two  Shawanoes  whom  he 
will  send  back  to  bring  them  some  of  it.  He  as- 
sures them  that  from  the  King,  who  is  the  greatest 
and  most  just  prince  of  the  universe,  they  have 
cause  to  expect  only  the  recompense  due  to  the 
courage  they  have  shown  in  the  discovery  and  the 
making  of  the  post,  and  urges  them  to  work,  since 
the  gain  of  their  own  cause  and  his  depends  on 
their  establishment.  They  should  therefore  all  set- 
tle themselves  on  large  clearings,  and  if  there  re- 
mains anything  to  be  done  at  the  Port,  they  should 
work  at  it  as  at  a  thing  for  their  true  interests. 
He  proposes  to  return  by  sea  in  the  spring,  and 
they  will  have  merchandise  and  all  their  require- 
ments, and  even  something  to  drink  his  health 
with,  as  Holland  has  saved  him  a  barrel  of  whis- 
ky. They  must  be  united  and  follow  Tonty's  coun- 
sel and  orders.  And  one  thing  of  great  conse- 
quence is  to  gather  as  many  buffalo  skins  as  pos- 
sible, for  which  Boisrondet  (his  commissary  at  the 

*A  noted  trader  and  voyageur. 


^  -VCrm&yksttJ*/.' 


[This  picture  is  a  reproduction  (from  Winsor:  "Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America")  of  a  reproduction  in  Margry's  "Me- 
mories," etc.,  of  an  old  copper  plate  published  a  few  years  after  La 
Salle's  death.  It  was  by  Van  der  Gucht,  and  appears  in  the  London 
edition  (1698)  of  Hennepin's  "New  Discovery."  The  face  of  La  Salle, 
enlarged,  is  that  painted  by  Healey  and  reproduced  on  p.  40.] 


Kismet  85 

Fort)  will  give  for  the  larger  two  beaver  skins  and 
for  the  smaller,  one.  They  must  always  speak  with 
great  respect  of  the  governor,  and  obey  his  orders, 
even  if  he  were  to  command  them  to  abandon  the 
Fort,  and  do  nothing  that  looks  like  plotting  and 
combining. ' ' 

As  always  at  the  court  of  Louis,  La  Salle  in 
Paris  was  again  successful  in  overthrowing  his 
enemies.  The  time  was  propitious.  Louis's  rela- 
tions with  Spain  made  La  Salle's  proposition  to 
seize  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  a  welcome  one ; 
and  he  obtained  all  he  asked  for.  La  Barre  was 
rebuked  and  La  Forest,  then  in  France,  was  sent 
back  as  La  Salle's  agent  to  reoccupy  both  Fort 
Frontenac  and  Fort  St.  Louis  and  to  take  charge 
of  all  his  properties,  which  La  Barre  was  directed 
to  restore  to  their  owner.  Finally  in  1684,  with 
about  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  colonists,  in 
four  ships,  La  Salle  sailed  from  Rochelle  for  the 
Mississippi. 

Unfortunately,  the  command  while  at  sea  was 
given  to  the  naval  officer,  Beaujeu;  there  was  fric- 
tion among  the  leaders,  for  which  both  were  re- 
sponsible; and  all  went  wrong.  A  storm  drove 
them  to  a  haven  far  to  the  west  of  their  destina- 
tion, the  mouth  of  the  great  river,  and  it  was  nec- 
essary to  make  a  landing  on  the  shore  of  the  pres- 
ent state  of  Texas,  where  an  attempt  was  made 


86  Starved  Rock 

to  found  a  settlement.  What  follows  is  a  tale  of 
miserable  disappointment,  acute  suffering,  foul 
treachery,  abject  failure,  death.  While  making 
search  for  the  lost  Mississippi,  La  Salle  was  mur- 
dered by  his  own  men  when  on  Trinity  River,  Tex- 
as, on  March  19,  1687.  Certain  malcontents  first 
killed  La  Salle's  nephew,  then  his  faithful  Shaw- 
noe  hunter,  and  his  servant,  and  finally  they  slew 
La  Salle  also,  from  an  ambuscade.  The  body  was 
dragged  naked  among  the  bushes  and  there  aban- 
doned to  the  wild  beasts,  its  burial  by  his  brother, 
the  Abbe  Cavelier,  being  forbidden  by  the  murder- 
ers. Thus  in  the  vigor  of  his  manhood,  at  the  age 
of  forty-three,  died  Robert  Cavelier,  Sieur  de  la 
Salle;  and  the  heroic  age  of  Canada  came  to  an 
end.  " Behold,"  says  Tonty,  closing  his  brief  ac- 
count of  this  disaster,  "  behold  the  fate  of  one  of 
the  greatest  men  of  the  age ;  of  wonderful  ability, 
and  capable  of  accomplishing  any  enterprise." 

As  for  the  colonists,  many  of  them,  including  the 
excellent  Father  Membre,  counted  always,  with 
Tonty,  La  Forest  and  Boisrondet,  as  one  of  the 
most  faithful  and  trusted  of  all  La  Salle's  com- 
panions, were  massacred  by  the  Indians;  some 
others  escaped  with  the  fleet  to  France ;  a  few  were 
captured  and  treated  as  prisoners  of  war  by  the 
Spaniards;  while  Abbe  Cavelier,  La  Salle's  broth- 
er, Douay  and  Joutel,  commander  of  the  soldiers 
attached  to  the  colony,  as  we  shall  see,  reached  the 
Rock  and  finally  were  able  to  return  to  France. 


,t 


LA  SALLE. 

I  hear  the  tread  of  pioneers 

Of  nations  yet  to  be; 
The  first  low  wash  of  waves  where  soon 

Shall  roll  a  human  sea. 

— Whittier. 

HIS  DREAM  OF  EMPIRE. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  in  certain  quarters  to 
belittle  the  character  and  accomplishments  of  La 
Salle.  While  Parkman  makes  him  second  only  to 
Champlain  as  the  greatest  of  all  French  discover- 
ers of  the  great  West,  Dr.  Shea  treats  him  as  sim- 
ply a  follower  of  trails  that  others  had  previously 
blazed.  Parkman  bears  testimony  to  the  heroic 
persistence  of  the  man  in  spite  of  immense  physi- 
cal and  financial  difficulties  and  the  more  disheart- 
ening machinations  of  enemies,  whose  adverse  in- 
fluence was  felt  at  every  step  of  his  career,  from 
the  court  of  Louis  XIV.  to  his  grave  in  Texas.  Dr. 
Shea,  on  the  other  hand,  ascribes  his  failure  to  a 
fatal  lack  of  capacity  as  an  explorer.  "La  Salle 
was  doubtless  a  persuasive  talker  in  setting  forth 
his  projects,"  he  says,  "though  utterly  incapable 
of  carrying  out  even  the  simplest. ' ' 

There  is  a  small  element  of  truth  in  the  latter 
view  of  La  Salle,  but  the  statement  is  an  exaggera- 

87 


Robert  Cavelier  Sieur  de  La  Salle. 

[Louis     Hennepin's     "Nouvelle     Decouverte,"     London 

Edition   of   1688.      The   picture   is   interesting,    but 

as    a    portrait    it    has    absolutely    no    value.] 


La  Salle  89 

tion  of  La  Salle's  real  fault.  It  is  true  that  La 
Salle,  strictly  speaking,  discovered  nothing  except 
the  Ohio  River— neither  the  Mississippi  nor  its  out- 
let, both  of  which  had  been  seen  by  the  Spaniards 
more  than  a  hundred  years  before  he  was  born ;  but 
these  discoveries  the  Spaniard  had  long  since  for- 
gotten, and  La  Salle's  claim  of  the  interior  of  the 
continent  for  France  by  right  of  his  discovery  of 
the  Ohio  and  of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  and 
by  his  occupation  thereof  was  never  disputed.  As 
to  the  Northwest,  though  La  Salle  was  not  the  first 
to  explore  its  lakes  and  rivers,  he  certainly  was 
the  first  to  enter  it  as  a  settler  and  as  the  pioneer 
of  those  who  here  have  made  a  great  state. 

Mr.  Moses*  goes  even  further  than  Shea,  attrib- 
uting to  La  Salle  a  bickering  spirit,  which  certain- 
ly is  not  a  characteristic  of  the  man  as  he  is  pic- 
tured by  Parkman,  confessedly  the  most  competent 
historian  of  this  period  and  department  of  our 
American  history.  Moses  says :  "Had  the  French 
governor  [La  Barre,  La  Salle's  enemy  at  all  times] 
and  La  Salle  pooled  their  issues,  and  instead  of 
endeavoring  to  break  each  other  down  worked  to- 
gether, there  was  nothing  to  prevent  their  build- 
ing up  a  colony  at  Fort  St.  Louis  [Starved  Rock], 
which  would  have  been  of  great  advantage  to  the 
interests  of  each,  and  exerted  a  controlling  influ- 

*John  Moses:    "History  of  Illinois." 


90  •        Starved  Rock 

ence  upon  the  destiny  of  New  France.  Had  agri- 
culture and  permanent  settlement  been  encouraged 
in  connection  with  the  traffic  with  the  Indians,  a 
prosperous  and  powerful  community  might  have 
been  established,  which,  growing  and  extending  to 
other  equally  favorable  localities  in  the  Illinois 
country,  might  in  fifty  years  have  constituted  a 
community  which  would  have  proved  an  insuper- 
able barrier  against  any  foreign  encroachment,  in 
consequence  of  its  ability  to  maintain  its  own  in- 
tegrity. But  the  rapacity  of  one  and  the  ambi- 
tion of  the  other  prevented  the  accomplishment  of 
such  a  result." 

Mr.  Moses  has  overlooked  the  fact  that  this  very 
idea  was,  in  truth,  the  keynote  of  La  Salle's  ca- 
reer; that  is,  to  take  possession  of  and  settle  the 
Mississippi  Valley ;  but  in  this  purpose  he  had  the 
jealous  and  mercenary  opposition  of  La  Barre,  the 
governor,  and  also  of  the  Jesuits,  neither  of  whom 
then  desired  permanent  settlers  about  them  to  in- 
terfere with  their  respective  relations  with  the  In- 
dians. The  responsibility  for  the  failure  of  La 
Salle's  attempts  to  colonize  the  Illinois  rests  much 
more  with  the  court  and  the  priesthood  on  the  St. 
Lawrence  than  with  La  Salle  on  the  Illinois.  His 
failures,  as  the  result  of  his  own  faults,  must  be 
attributed,  not  so  much  to  the  withering  influences 
of  a  soul  consumed  with  petty  quarrels  and  a  bick- 


La  Salle  91 

ering  spirit,  but  rather  to  his  unfortunate  inability 
to  create  real  friendships  among  his  own  people, 
and  to  his  besetting  sin  of  trusting  to  no  one  but 
himself  for  the  execution  of  the  simplest  tasks, 
even  of  projects  requiring  for  their  success  the  co- 
operation of  large  bodies  of  men. 

'fit  is  easy  to  reckon  up  his  defects,  but  it  is  not 
easy  to  hide  from  sight  the  Roman  virtues  that 
redeemed  them,"  writes  Parkman.  " Beset  by  a 
throng  of  enemies,  he  stands,  like  the  King  of 
Israel,  head  and  shoulders  above  them  all.  He 
was  a  tower  of  adamant,  against  whose  impregna- 
ble front  hardship  and  danger,  the  rage  of  man 
and  of  the  elements,  the  southern  sun,  the  north- 
ern blast,  fatigue,  famine  and  disease,  delay,  dis- 
appointment and  deferred  hope  emptied  their 
quivers  in  vain.  That  very  pride,  which  Coriola- 
nus  like,  declared  itself  most  sternly  in  the  thick- 
est press  of  foes,  has  in  it  something  to  challenge 
admiration.  Never,  under  the  impenetrable  mail 
of  paladin  or  crusader,  beat  a  heart  of  more  intrep- 
id metal  than  within  the  stoic  panoply  that  armed 
the  breast  of  La  Salle.  To  estimate  aright  the  mar- 
vels of  his  patient  fortitude  one  must  follow  his 
track  through  the  vast  scene  of  his  interminable 
journeyings,  those  thousands  of  weary  miles  of 
forest,  marsh  and  river,  where  again  and  again,  in 
the  bitterness  of  baffled  striving,  the  untiring  pil- 


92  Stkrved  Rock 

grim  pushed  onward  toward  the  goal  which  he 
never  was  to  attain."* 

More  than  two  hundred  years  have  passed  since 
La  Salle  perished  in  the  trackless  waste  of  the  far 
Southwest,  and  his  venturous  soul  fled  to  that 
" bourne  from  which  no  traveler  returns";  but 
even  as  he  stood  upon  the  summit  of  Starved  Rock 
in  1683,  and  his  eye  swept  over  the  magnificent 
landscape,  his  prophetic  spirit  saw  in  the  then  dis- 
tant future  the  grandeur  of  the  empire  that  was 
yet  to  come,  whose  very  heart  would  throb  in  the 
fertile  lands  spread  out  before  him,  which  he  loved 
to  characterize  as  "a  terrestrial  paradise."  It  was 
the  master  mind  of  La  Salle  that  first  conceived 
the  policy  which  led  on,  step  by  step,  from  Starved 
Rock  "to  Fort  Duquesne,  Braddock's  defeat  and 
Forbes 's  march  to  the  Forks  of  the  Ohio"  and  the 
train  of  events  culminating  in  the  fall  of  Quebec,  t 
Looking  into  the  future,  La  Salle  saw  on  these 
prairies  and  upon  the  shores  of  the  Great  Lakes  a. 
New  France  far  more  powerful  than  the  old ;  and 
this  vision  was  the  guiding  star  of  his  romantic  ca- 
reer. As  the  first  white  man  to  establish  a  settle- 
ment upon  her  soil,  he  has  been  justly  styled  "the 
Father  of  Illinois";  but  it  was  only  when  Wolfe 
triumphed  on  the  Heights  of  Abraham  that  the 


*  Parkman  :     "La  Salle,"  etc. 

f  Hinsdale:    "The  Old  Northwest. 


La  Salle 


93 


empire  which  La  Salle  foresaw  and  devoted  his 
life  to  found  became  possible.  What  La  Salle 
did  not  see  nor  imagine  was  that  the  inexorable 
law  of  political  evolution  had  destined  that  this 
great  power  would  be  not  Norman  but  Anglo-Sax- 
on. 


Path  Leading  to  the  Top  of  Starved  Bock. 


TONTY. 

His  step  is  firm,  his  eye  is  keen, 
Nor  years  in  brawl  and  battle  spent, 
Nor  toil,  nor  wounds,  nor  pain  have  bent 

The  lordly  frame  of  old  Castin. 

— Scott. 

Henry  de  Tonty,  a  veteran  of  the  Sicilian  wars,* 
whom  La  Salle  met  in  Paris  in  1678  and  brought 
to  America,  is  one  of  the  most  superb  figures  in 
the  annals  of  the  exploration  of  the  Mississippi 
Valley.  His  industry  and  energy,  his  bravery  and 
his  tact,  his  integrity  and  his  faithfulness,  his  hon- 
orable character  and  amiable  disposition,  unite  to 


*  Tonty  was  the  son  of  Lorenzo  Tonty,  a  banker  at  Naples,  Italy. 
In  his  petition  addressed  to  the  Count  de  Pontchartrain,  Minister  of 
Marine,  in  1690  [1691?],  Tonty  said  that  he  entered  the  military  service 
of  France  as  a  cadet  in  1668-1669;  served  four  years  as  a  midshipman 
at  Marseilles  and  Toulon,  making  four  campaigns  on  shipsof  war  and 
three  in  galleys ;  was  made  captain  at  Messina,  and  in  the  interval  was 
lieutenant  of  horse;  had  his  right  hand  shot  away  by  a  grenade  at 
Libisso;  was  taken  prisoner  and  conducted  to  Metasse,  where  he  was 
held  for  six  months  and  then  exchanged  for  the  governor's  son ;  after  a 
visit  to  France  he  returned  to  Sicily,  as  a  volunteer  in  the  galleys ;  and 
when  the  troops  were  discharged,  having  no  other  occupation,  he  joined 
La  Salle,  1678. 

95 


96  Starved  Rock 

differentiate  him  from  all  those  whose  names  as 
the  lesser  stars  crowd  the  pages  of  those  early  an- 
nals. Parkman  calls  him,  "That  brave,  loyal  and 
generous  man,  always  vigilant  and  always  active, 
beloved  and  feared  alike  by  white  man  and  by  red." 
Mrs.  Catherwoodf  says:  "La  Salle  is  a  definite 
figure  in  the  popular  mind.  But  La  Salle's  great- 
er friend  is  known  only  to  historians  and  students. 
To  me  the  finest  fact  in  the  Norman  explorer's  ca- 
reer is  the  devotion  he  commanded  in  Henry  de 
Tonty.  No  stupid  dreamer,  no  ruffian  at  heart, 
no  betrayer  of  friendships,  no  mere  blundering 
woodsman— as  La  Salle  has  been  outlined  by  his 
enemies— could  have  bound  to  himself  such  a  man 
as  Tonty.  The  love  of  this  friend,  and  the  words 
this  friend  has  left  on  record,  thus  honor  La  Salle. 
And  we  who  like  courage  and  steadfastness  and 
gentle  courtesy  in  man  owe  much  honor  which  has 
never  been  paid  to  Henry  de  Tonty." 

When  La  Salle  left  the  Rock  for  France  in  Aug- 
ust, 1683,  he  placed  Tonty  in  command.  The  sit- 
uation was  desperate  in  the  extreme.  There  were 
but  about  twenty  white  men  at  the  Fort,  and  for 
these  there  was  but  little  ammunition— scarcely  a 
hundred  pounds  of  powder,  and  proportionately 
as  little  lead,  with  which  to  do  the  hunting  and  to 
protect  the  Rock  against  the  Iroquois  who  might 


t  Mrs.  Mary  Hartwell  Catherwood  :  "The  Story  of  Tonty." 


Tonty  97 

be  expected  at  any  time  to  attack  the  Fort;  nor 
in  the  events  of  the  immediate  past  was  there  hope 
or  expectation  of  obtaining  further  supplies  un- 
til La  Salle  himself  should  return ;  and  La  Salle, 
as  we  have  seen,  was  a  few  days  later  deprived  of 
his  command  by  De  Baugis,  whose  appearance  at 
the  Rock  confirmed  Tonty 's  worst  suspicions  of 
La  Salle's  disfavor  at  Quebec. 

At  Fort  St.  Louis,  under  the  divided  authority 
of  De  Baugis  and  Tonty,  the  winter  following  La 
Salle's  departure  was  passed  amid  much  quarrel- 
ing, not  the  less  bitter  and  continuous  that  De 
Baugis  and  his  immediate  superior,  Durantaye, 
who  came  down  from  Mackinac,  made  it  a  part  of 
their  duty  to  detach  as  far  as  possible  La  Salle's 
men  and  his  Indian  allies  from  their  allegiance  to 
him  and  to  render  them  discontented.  In  the 
spring  there  were  again  rumors  of  a  coming  raid 
by  the  Iroquois  who  were,  in  fact,  encouraged  in 
their  outrages  by  the  undisguised  hostility  of  La 
Barre  toward  La  Salle  and  all  those  associated 
with  him.  During  the  previous  winter  La  Barre 's 
privately  outfitted  traders  and  trappers  had  in- 
vaded La  Salle's  grant,  and  both  these  men  and 
the  Iroquois  felt  they  had  free  hands  to  rob  whom- 
soever of  La  Salle's  men  or  allies  they  should  find. 
It  was,  then,  with  a  sort  of  " poetic  justice,"  that 
early  in  that  same  spring,  a  party  of  fourteen 


98  Starved  Rock 

Frenchmen  who  had  been  outfitted  by  LaBarre 
and  were  led  by  Rene  Le  Gardeur,  who  had  spent 
the  winter  on  the  Kankakee  hunting  under  the 
protection  of  LaBarre's  permits,  were  robbed  by 
a  party  of  raiding  Iroquois  on  the  Illinois.*  The 
Indians,  indeed,  treated  LaBarre's  permits  and 
his  letters  to  Burantaye  and  Be  Baugis  with  in- 
sulting contempt,  and  left  the  Frenchmen  in  so 
desperate  a  strait  that  they  would  probably  have 
died  of  starvation  but  for  the  friendly  offices  of 
certain  Mascoutins  who  guided  them  to  the  Green 
Bay  mission. 

It  was  from  this  party  of  La  Barre's  partisans 
that  the  scouting  Iroquois  learned  that  La  Salle 
had  been  supplanted  at  Fort  St.  Louis  and  was  no 
longer  in  the  West.  Thereupon  the  Iroquois  or- 
ganized an  immediate  attack  on  the  little  garri- 
son. Rumors  of  the  approaching  foray  coming 
to  the  ears  of  Be  Baugis  and  Tonty,  Be  Baugis 
sent  at  once  to  Burantaye  at  Mackinac  for  aid  and 
ammunition  for  the  defense,  of  which  they  long  had 
had  need;  but  the  day  after  the  departure  of  the 
messenger  the  Iroquois  appeared  (March  20, 1684) 
and  at  once  attacked  the  Fort  and  the  allies.  They 
sent  a  hail  of  bullets  at  the  palisades  by  day  and 
by  night  and  even  attempted  the  impossible— an 
assault;  but  after  six  days'  fighting  they  were  re- 


*The  furs  stolen  are  said  to  have  been  worth  16,000  francs  (livres). 


Tonty  99 

pulsed  and  withdrew.  The  Illinois  and  allied 
tribes  then  pursued  vigorously.  The  prisoners 
taken  by  the  Iroquois  were  enabled  to  escape; 
while  the  pursuers  returned  to  the  Rock  in  tri- 
umph with  many  Iroquois  scalps. 

Two  months  later  (May  21,  1684)  Durantaye 
came  to  the  Rock  with  sixty  Frenchmen,  includ- 
ing Father  Allouez,  who  was  always  to  be  found 
among  the  Illinois  or  their  neighbors  when  La 
Salle  was  not.  Ostensibly  Durantaye  had  come 
from  Mackinac  to  assist  in  the  defense  against  the 
Iroquois ;  but  in  fact  his  purpose  was  to  send  Ton- 
ty away.  He  brought  La  Barre 's  order  to  Tonty 
to  retire  from  the  Rock,  and  Durantaye  was  pre- 
pared to  enforce  this  order  by  physical  means,  if 
need  be.  Tonty,  however,  made  no  resistance ;  and 
later  in  the  same  month,  having  turned  over  La 
Salle's  property  to  the  faithful  Boisrondet,  he  left 
the  Rock  to  go  alone  to  Montreal  and  Quebec, 
reaching  the  latter  place  in  August,  after  an  ab- 
sence of  some  six  vears.  Here  he  learned  that  La 
Barre  had  seized  Fort  Frontenac  also  and  had 
ousted  La  Salle's  agent  La  Forest,  who  also  had 
returned  to  France,  after  having  rejected  with 
scorn  La  Barre 's  proposal  that  he  should  remain 
in  charge  at  Frontenac  as  a  partner  in  the  plunder 
of  La  Salle. 

La  Salle,  as  we  have  seen,  carried  all  before  him 


100  Starved  Bock 

at  Paris  and  the  court.  LaBarre  was  rebuked 
and  directed  to  make  complete  reparation  and  im- 
mediate restoration  of  all  the  properties  of  which 
La  Salle  had  been  deprived  and  to  deliver  the 
same  to  La  Forest  who  would  return  to  Canada 
by  the  express  command  of  the  King  to  receive 
them.  The  King  further  issued  to  La  Salle  a  com- 
mission making  him  commandant  of  the  whole  re- 
gion from  Fort  St.  Louis  on  the  Illinois  to  "New 
Biscay''  (northern  Mexico)  ;  and  in  a  personal  let- 
ter to  La  Barre  the  King  directed  that  he  should 
"do  nothing  adverse  to  the  interests  of  La  Salle 
whom  he  had  taken  under  his  particular  protec- 
tion." 

When  La  Forest  reached  Quebec  in  September, 
1684,  La  Barre  was  still  further  humiliated  by  the 
knowledge  that  he  had  brought  to  Tonty  the  King's 
commission  as  captain  of  foot  in  the  French  army, 
as  well  as  a  royal  order  to  La  Barre  to  surrender 
Fort  Frontenac  to  La  Forest  and  Fort  St.  Louis 
(the  Rock)  to  Tonty  who  was  named  as  its  gov- 
ernor. La  Forest  went  at  once  to  Frontenac,  but 
Tonty  was  held  at  Montreal  by  the  winter.  In 
the  following  spring  (1685),  with  an  outfit  valued 
at  twenty  thousand  livres,  he  started  for  the  Rock, 
which  he  reached  in  June ;  and  there  can  be  little 
doubt  that  he  took  peculiar  pleasure  in  giving  De 
Baugis  his  dismissal.    In  his  receipt  (dated  June 


Tonty  iOl 

26,  1685)  to  DeBaugis  for  the  command,  he  de- 
scribes himself  as  "  first  seigneur  of  the  Isle  of 
Tonty,  captain  of  a  company  detached  from  the 
marine,  sub-delegate  of  Monsieur  de  Meulle,  In- 
tendant  of  New  France,  to  the  country  of  the  Ot- 
tawas  and  other  nations,  and  governor  of  Fort  St. 
Louis."* 

Tonty 's  first  duty  was  to  restore  harmony 
among  his  Indian  allies.  During  De  Baugis'  ad- 
ministration, while  Tonty  was  absent,  the  Miamis 
and  Illinois  had  quarreled,  the  breach  being  so 
serious  that  the  Miamis  had  made  a  fierce  attack 
on  the  Illinois.  It  cost  Tonty  many  presents  and 
much  patient  negotiation  to  restore  the  peace  that 
was  so  necessary  to  the  defense  of  the  Rock  against 
the  Iroquois. 

It  was  fall  before  good  feeling  was  restored. 
Then  Tonty  was  again  alarmed  by  rumors  of  dis- 
aster to  La  Salle,  that  began  to  fill  the  wilderness. 
These  stories,  which,  by  ways  that  are  not  much 
understood  by  us,  had  traveled,  as  did  all  news 
through  the  wilderness  in  those  days,  with  won- 
derful rapidity  and  singular  general  accuracy,  be- 
came so  insistent  that  Tonty  determined  to  go  to 
Mackinac  for  information.  There,  at  that  great 
clearing-house  of  wilderness,  his  fears  were  to 
some  degree  heightened  by  what  he  heard,  know- 

*  Mason:    "Land  of  the  Illinois." 


102  Starved  Bock 

ing  as  lie  did  that  La  Salle  had  sailed  for  the  mouth 
of  the  Mississippi.  On  the  other  hand,  Tonty 
learned  there  with  deep  satisfaction,  no  doubt, 
that  La  Barre  had  been  dismissed  in  disgrace  and 
that  the  Marquis  de  Denonville  had,  on  August 
13,  1685,  succeeded  him  as  governor  of  Canada. 
He  was  also  told  that  the  trader  Holland  had 
brought  word  for  Tonty  to  proceed  to  Montreal 
to  consult  with  the  governor  upon  the  conduct  of 
a  projected  expedition  against  the  Iroquois.  Ton- 
ty, however,  felt  it  his  first  duty  to  find  and,  if 
need  be,  relieve  La  Salle.  Therefore,  on  Novem- 
ber 30,  he  left  Mackinac  in  a  canoe  for  the  Eock, 
which  after  much  suffering,  relieved  in  a  meas- 
ure by  the  Jesuits  at  Chicago,  he  reached  in 
January,  1686.  Before  proceeding  further  he 
sought  and  found  Eolland,  from  whom  he  had  as- 
surances of  Denonville 's  good  will  toward  the  Illi- 
nois establishment ;  and  the  knowledge  of  this  fact 
did  much  to  restore  confidence  and  bring  content 
to  the  colonists  about  the  Eock,  as  well  as  to  leave 
the  way  open  to  Tonty  to  take  up  the  quest  for  La 
Salle. 

In  February,  then,  nothing  further  having  been 
heard  of  La  Salle,  Tonty  determined  to  go  to  the 
Gulf  in  search  of  him.  La  Forest  came  west  from 
Fort  Frontenac  to  take  command  at  Fort  St. 
Louis  during  Tonty 's  absence,  and  on  February 


Tonty  103 

16,  with  twenty-five  Frenchmen*  and  four  Sha- 
wanoes,  Tonty  set  out  from  the  Rock  for  the  low- 
er Mississippi.  In  Holy  Week,  just  three  years 
to  a  day  from  that  one  on  which  La  Salle  in  1683 
had  set  up  the  royal  arms  and  pronounced  his 
proclamation  of  occupation,  Tonty  and  his  party 
were  at  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi.  But  there 
was  no  sign  of  La  Salle.  They  searched  the  coun- 
try on  either  bank  for  many  miles  without  obtain- 
ing any  information,  and  then  reluctantly  Tonty 
turned  his  face  homeward.  At  an  Indian  village 
near  where  they  re-erected  the  royal  arms,  Tonty 
gave  to  a  chief  a  letter  to  La  Salle,  in  the  event  of 
a  meeting,  which  the  Indian  preserved  faithfully 
for  fourteen  years  and  then  delivered  to  D'lber- 
ville  who  then  ascended  the  river  to  take  up  the 
task  of  working  out  the  colonial  policy  that  La 
Salle  had  conceived  and  had  died  to  inaugurate. 

At  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  where  La  Salle 
had  granted  a  seigniory  to  Tonty,  ten  of  the  lat- 
ter 's  men  now  elected  to  settle;  and  Tonty  gave 
them  the  lands  they  wished  and  built  them  a  house 
surrounded  with  a  palisade. f     On  June  24,  the 


*In  this  party  were  the  surgeon  Jean  Michel,  who  had  been  with 
La  Salle  to  the  Gulf,  and  Rene  Cuillerier,  a  famous  name  at  Montreal, 
an  ancestor  of  the  Chicago  Beaubiens. 

fDouay  says  (Le  Clero:  "First  Establishment  of  the  Faith  in  New 
France")  that  Couture  "told  us  the  Sieur  de  Tonty  had  stationed  them 
there  to  serve  as  an  intermediate  station  to  aid  the  Sieur  de  la  Salle 
and  to  maintain  an  alliance  with  the  tribes  and  to  shield  them  against 
attacks  by  the  Iroquois." 


104  Starved  Rock 

remainder  of  the  party  reached  the  Rock,  all  glad 
enough  to  take  a  long  rest. 

Tonty  was  the  sole  exception.  Having  persuad- 
ed two  Illinois  chiefs  to  go  with  him,  he  proceeded 
at  once  to  answer  the  summons  of  Denonville  sent 
through  Holland  to  meet  him  at  Montreal,  which 
place  Tonty  reached  at  the  end  of  July— a  month 
of  strenuous  paddling,  indeed.  The  conference 
concluded,  Tonty  and  the  Illinois  returned  at  once, 
and  beached  their  canoes  at  the  base  of  the  Rock 
early  in  December— making  for  Tonty  a  record  of 
canoe  traveling  for  the  ten  months  of  about  five 
thousand  miles. 

Denonville  was  a  different  type  of  governor 
from  La  Barre.  At  least,  he  appreciated  the  polit- 
ical and  economic  conditions  menacing  the  French 
interests  in  Canada  from  the  direction  of  Albany, 
daily  growing  more  serious.  The  activity  of  the 
English  in  the  Mohawk  Valley  and  especially  their 
ambitious  incursions  into  the  heart  of  the  fur 
country,  making  necessary  the  placing  by  Du  Lhut 
of  a  fort  at  the  outlet  of  Lake  Huron  into  St.  Clair 
River,  had  aroused  Denonville  to  defensive  activ- 
ity. In  1686  the  English  traders,  already  estab- 
lished on  Hudson  Bay,  menaced  from  New  York 
even  Mackinac  and  French  communications  with 
the  Upper  Country  and  might  have  proved  formid- 
able but  for  the  activity  of  Du  Lhut,  who  stopped 


Tonty  105 

and  turned  back  one  considerable  party  who  had 
all  but  escaped  his  keen  vigilance.  In  Dongan,  too, 
governor  of  New  York,  a  man  who  understood  La 
Salle's  plans  fully  and  knew  the  need  of  a  prompt 
counter  movement,  Denonville  found  a  rival  well 
worth  his  attention,  as  the  spirited  correspondence 
between  them  amply  attests.  If  France  and  Eng- 
land were  then  at  peace,  as  it  so  happened,  for 
King  William's  War  did  not  begin  until  1689,  there 
were  still  the  common  disturbances  of  the  frontier 
to  offer  a  pretext;  and  as  the  Iroquois  were  " Eng- 
lish Indians,"  a  stroke  at  the  English  might  be 
made  over  the  shoulders  of  the  Iroquois.  So,  very 
early  in  his  administration,  as  we  have  seen,  De- 
nonville had  planned  a  punitive  expedition  against 
the  Iroquois,  whose  arrogance,  since  the  shameful 
peace  made  with  them  by  La  Barre,  when  he  aban- 
doned the  Illinois  and  Fort  St.  Louis  to  their  fury, 
had  made  the  Five  Nations  a  constant  menace  to 
the  settlements  on  the  St.  Lawrence  also.  The 
summer  of  1686  was,  therefore,  spent  in  mobiliz- 
ing an  army  from  the  forts  to  take  the  field  the 
following  year;  and  he  had  called  for  aid  upon 
all  the  western  posts:  Dorvilliers,  La  Forest's  suc- 
cessor at  Frontenac ;  De  Lhut  at  Fort  St.  Joseph 
at  the  foot  of  Lake  Huron;  Durantaye  at  Macki- 
nac, and  La  Forest  at  the  Rock,  as  well  as  from 
the  colonies  on  the  St.  Lawrence.    Denonville  in 


106  Starved  Rock 

writing  La  Forest  at  the  Rock  on  June  6,  1686, 
asking  for  aid  in  the  coming  campaign,  suggested 
that  if  Tonty  should  return  from  the  lower  Missis- 
sippi, which  he  doubted  would  be  the  case,  he 
should  command  the  contingent  from  Fort  St. 
Louis,  otherwise  La  Forest  himself  should  under- 
take that  duty.  Tonty,  as  we  have  seen,  not  only 
did  return,  but  was  able  the  same  fall  to  meet  De- 
nonville  in  Montreal  and  give  him  valuable  advice 
relative  to  the  conduct  of  the  expedition. 

On  his  return  to  the  Rock  in  December,  Tonty 
sent  out  runners  to  the  western  tribes,  inviting 
them  to  join  in  the  campaign  the  following  spring. 
Accordingly  the  Indians  assembled  near  the  Rock 
in  April,  1687.  Tonty  welcomed  and  entertained 
them  most  satisfactorily  with  a  dog  feast,  a  func- 
tion which  Sabastien  Rale,  the  missionary,  in  a 
letter*  to  his  nephew  says,  "  passes  among  the  In- 
dians for  a  most  magnificent  festival,  and  is  there- 
fore called  the  Feast  of  the  Chiefs."  La  Forest 
had  already  departed  from  the  Rock  with  thirty 
Frenchmen  in  canoes,  agreeing  to  meet  Tonty  on 
the  upper  St.  Clair  River;  and  on  April  17, 
Tonty  followed  on  foot,  overland,  with  sixteen 
Frenchmen  and  one  hundred  and  forty-nine  Illi- 
nois warriors,  the  Rock  with  twenty  men  having 
been  left  in  the  command  of  Sieur  de  Belief  on- 
taine. 


Kip:    "The  Early  Jesuit  Missions  in  North  America." 


Tonty  107 

Denonville  began  his  campaign  in  1687  by  a  tre- 
mendous blunder,  having  in  June  treacherously 
seized  at  Port  Frontenac  certain  Iroquois  whom 
he  had  himself  invited  there  on  the  pretext  of  a 
friendly  conference.  That  base  act  concluded,  he 
assembled  his  various  detachments  of  soldiers, 
voyageurs  and  Indian  allies  on  July  10  at  Ironde- 
quoit  on  Lake  Ontario— two  thousand  fighting 
men  all  told— and  took  the  command  in  person. 
On  July  12,  he  proceeded  to  the  Seneca  villages 
where  a  sharp  engagement  took  place,  in  which 
the  skill  in  Indian  warfare  and  the  bravery  of  the 
men  of  the  West  under  Tonty,  La  Forest,  Duran- 
taye*  and  Du  Lhut,  saved  the  day.  The  Iroquois 
were  routed  and  severely  chastised  and  their  vil- 
lages burned  and  crops  destroyed.  The  western 
commanders  all  were  rewarded,  Tonty  and  La 
Forest  being  recommended  to  the  home  govern- 
ment for  the  rewards  due  their  prowess  and  val- 
uable services ;  and  the  Iroquois  never  afterwards 
successfully  raided  the  Illinois. 

After  the  battle  Tonty  and  Du  Lhut  and  their 
men  started  for  the  West  in  canoes,  while  the  In- 
dians returned  across  the   country,  bearing  the 


*  With  this  mention  Durantaye  disappears  from  this  narrative.  He 
was  born  at  Nantes  in  1641 ;  came  to  Canada  with  his  regiment ;  retired 
from  Mackinac  (1683-89)  and  aided  in  Frontenac's  War.  He  was 
esteemed  the  best  soldier  of  his  time  in  the  colony.  He  died  in  1717, 
leaving  descendants  who  still  live  in  Canada. 


108  Starved  Rock 

scalps  of  the  slain.  At  DuLhut's  Fort  St.  Jo- 
seph, at  the  foot  of  Lake  Huron,  Tonty  met  Father 
Gravier,  the  missionary  to  the  Illinois,  with  whom 
he  proceeded  via  Mackinac  to  the  Rock  which  they 
reached  on  October  27. 

Here  on  ascending  the  Rock  Tonty  met  a  re- 
markable group  of  strangers,  being  none  other 
than  the  Abbe  Cavelier,  La  Salle's  older  brother; 
young  Cavelier,  his  nephew;  Father  Anastase 
Douay,  a  Recollet  friar ;  Teissier,  a  marine ;  and  a 
faithful  officer  of  La  Salle's  soldiery  in  Louisiana, 
named  Henri  de  Joutel,  the  chronicler  of  La  Salle's 
fatal  voyage  and  his  death— the  remnants  of  the 
colony  of  men,  women  and  children  who  sailed  with 
La  Salle  from  Rochelle  on  July  24,  1684.  They 
had  made  their  way,  after  La  Salle's  murder, 
across  Texas  and  Arkansas  to  the  mouth  of  the 
Arkansas  River  where  they  fortunately  met  Sieurs 
Couture  and  De  Launay  who,  with  the  Indians  of 
the  neighborhood,  gave  them  a  welcome  and  shel- 
ter in  La  Salle's  name,  and,  who  when  their  guests 
had  recovered  their  strength,  sent  them  forward 
to  the  Rock,  where  they  arrived  in  the  early  after- 
noon of  Sunday,  September  14,  1687.  The  Sha- 
wanoe  runner  Tupin,  who  had  met  them  at  Lake 
Peoria  and  understood  that  La  Salle  himself  was 
in  the  party,  had  already  announced  their  coming ; 
and  "  drawing  near,  we  were  met  by  some  Indians 


Tonty  109 

that  were  on  the  bank,  who,"  says  Joutel,  " hav- 
ing viewed  us  well,  and  understanding  that  we 
came  from  La  Salle,  and  that  we  belonged  to  him, 
ran  to  the  Fort  to  carry  the  news ;  and  immediate- 
ly we  saw  a  Frenchman  come  out  with  a  company 
of  Indians  who  fired  a  volley  of  several  pieces  to 
welcome  us." 

Upon  landing  the  travelers  were  at  once  asked 
where  La  Salle  was ;  but  as  the  Abbe  Cavelier 
feared  he  might  lose  the  advantage  of  his  rela- 
tionship to  La  Salle  if  his  death  were  known,  they 
had  previously  determined  to  conceal  the  fact  of 
his  death  until  they  had  arrived  again  in  France. 
"We  told  them,"  continues  Joutel,  "that  he  had 
brought  us  part  of  the  way,  etc.,  and  that  he  was 
then  in  good  health.  All  that  was  true  enough; 
for  M.  Cavelier  and  I,  who  thus  spoke,  were  not 
present  at  La  Salle's  death.  It  is  no  less  true  that 
Father  Anastasius  [Douay]  and  he  they  call  Teis- 
sier could  have  given  a  better  account,  the  one  as 
an  eye-witness  and  the  other  as  one  of  the  murder- 
ers [accessory  before  the  fact],  and  they  were  both 
with  us."  Accepting  Abbe  Cavelier 's  word  as  the 
whole  truth,  Belief ontaine,  Tonty 's  lieutenant  in 
command,  gave  them  hearty  welcome  and  con- 
ducted them  to  the  chapel  within  the  Fort,  where 
a  Te  Deum  was  sung  in  thanksgiving.  "All  this 
while,"  says  Joutel,  "the  natives  came  by  inter- 


110  Starved  Rock 

vals  to  fire  their  pieces  to  express  their  joy  for 
our  return  and  for  the  news  we  brought  of  M.  de 
La  Salle,  which  refreshed  our  sorrow  for  his  mis- 
fortune, perceiving  that  his  presence  would  have 
settled  all  things  advantageously."  They  saw,  too, 
that  if  they  had  at  once  told  the  truth  here  was 
spirit  enough  to  have  rescued  the  unfortunate  peo- 
ple they  had  left  behind  them;  but  they  learned 
the  value  of  truth,  as  many  others  also  do,  when  it 
was  too  late— their  lie  had  closed  their  mouths  and 
many  needlessly  suffered. 

The  Abbe's  party  desired  to  move  on  as  soon  as 
possible  for  Quebec,  and  Boisrondet  furnished 
them  with  a  canoe  for  the  purpose.  They  gath- 
ered provisions  for  the  journey  and  took  furs  to 
trade  at  Mackinac;  and  thus  provisioned  they  set 
out,  in  the  company  of  three  voyageurs  who  had 
stopped  at  the  Rock  on  their  way  to  Mackinac; 
but  encountering  only  foul  weather,  they  were  un- 
able to  navigate  the  lake  and  so  they  cached  their 
goods  at  Chicago  and  returned  to  the  Rock  to 
spend  the  winter.  Joutel  expresses  regret  at  this 
necessity  because  it  would  by  so  much  delay  the 
succors  they  had  intended  to  send  "to  those  French 
of  our  own  company  whom  we  had  left  on  the  coast 
of  the  Bay  of  Mexico." 

Thus  it  was  that  Tonty  was  able  to  meet  them 
in  October  and  to  act  as  their  host  during  the 


Tonty  111 

winter;  and  the  leisure  Joutel  thereafter  enjoyed 
gave  him  opportunity  to  make  notes  of  his  obser- 
vations on  the  Rock  and  the  French  residing  there. 
"Fort  Louis,"  he  says,  "is  only  fortified  with 
stakes  and  palisades,  and  some  houses  advancing 
to  the  edge  of  the  Rock.  It  has  a  very  spacious 
esplanade,  or  place  of  arms.  The  place  is  nat- 
urally strong,  and  might  be  made  so  by  art  with 
very  little  expense.  Several  of  the  natives  live  in 
it  in  their  huts.  I  cannot  give  an  account  of  the 
latitude  it  stands  in,  but  nothing  can  be  pleasant- 
er."  He  is  very  enthusiastic  about  the  hunting, 
the  beauty  of  the  scenery,  the  temperate  climate, 
the  abundance  of  timber,  of  fruits  and  nuts  and 
grass  and  building  materials  and  coal,  the  fertil- 
ity of  the  soil.  "Whatever  is  sown  grows  there, 
whether  herbs,  roots,  Indian  and  even  European 
corn  [wheat],  as  has  been  tried  by  M.  Boisrondet, 
who  sowed  all  sorts,  and  had  a  bountiful  crop,  and 
we  ate  of  the  bread,  which  was  very  good.  • ' 

To  Tonty  the  same  miserable  subterfuges  about 
La  Salle  were  rehearsed,  and  he  repeated  the  wel- 
come his  lieutenant  had  already  extended.  And 
the  Fort's  population  prepared  for  the  winter. 

Tonty  had  brought  with  him  to  the  Rock  sev- 
eral Frenchmen,  among  whom  was  one  of  his  cous- 
ins, Greysolon  de  la  Tourette,  a  younger  brother 
of  Du  Lhut ;  and  later  in  the  autumn  La  Forest 


112  Starved  Rock 

again  came  to  the  Fort  to  pass  the  winter.  Still 
later,  toward  the  end  of  December,  two  men  in 
charge  of  the  carriers  who  were  bringing  ammuni- 
tion and  supplies  from  Montreal  arrived  and  re- 
ported that  they  were  unable  to  get  further  with 
their  goods  than  La  Salle's  fort  at  Chicago; 
whereupon  Tonty  sent  the  Chief  of  the  Shawa- 
noes  with  thirty  of  his  people  to  bring  the  mer- 
chandise to  the  Rock,  which  they  did.  One  of 
these  Frenchmen  was  Sieur  Juchereau  de  Saint 
Denis,  then  second  in  command  at  Mackinac, 
whom  Tonty  had  invited  to  visit  him  in  order  to 
enjoy  the  hunting  in  a  milder  climate  than  Mack- 
inac can  boast ;  and  if  one  may  believe  the  chroni- 
clers of  those  days  and  the  stories  of  the  later 
English  settlers  who  succeeded  the  French  in  the 
occupancy  of  these  same  lands,  so  abundant  was 
the  game  that  many  a  merry  group  of  hunters 
might  have  been  seen  after  a  day  on  the  frozen 
river  bringing  back  the  light  sledges  well  laden 
with  deer  and  turkeys  and  other  spoils  of  the  chase. 
"Of  our  living,"  says  Joutel,  "there  was  no  com- 
plaint to  make,  except  that  we  had  nothing  but 
water  to  drink." 

The  winter  passed  pleasantly  enough,  with 
hunting  by  day,  and  snug  nights  around  the  cabin 
fires  of  the  Fort.  There  was  the  trading  also  to 
be  attended  to ;  for  Indians  were  all  about  them  in 


Tonty  113 

their  villages  and  the  Rock  was  the  central  forti- 
fication and  trading  headquarters  for  the  tribes 
whom  Franquelin  locates  on  his  map  of  La  Salle's 
colony  of  1683.  There  was  some  shifting  always 
of  Indian  populations,  of  course ;  but  the  Indians 
of  the  Rock  colony  in  1687  were  substantially  the 
same  as  in  1683.  The  Miamis  were  located  on 
Buffalo  Rock,  to  the  east  two  or  three  miles ;  oth- 
ers of  the  same  tribe  were  at  Chicago ;  others  were 
at  St.  Joseph,  and  still  others  at  Maramech,  in 
northeastern  Illinois  as  Franquelin  locates  it.  J. 
F.  Steward*  locates  the  site  of  this  once  some- 
what noted  village  on  Fox  River  near  Piano  in 
Kendall  county.  Then  there  were  the  allied  tribes 
of  Mascoutins  and  Kickapoos  on  Rock  River,  who 
traded  at  the  Rock  or  at  Maramech  with  other 
tribes  there  who  came  to  the  Rock  or  met  traders 
from  the  Rock.  The  great  east-and-west  trail, 
says  Steward,  crossed  the  Fox  River  at  Maramech, 
while  that  village  existed ;  and  there  it  crossed  also 
the  Kishwaukee  trail,  from  the  swamps  of  the 
northwest,  over  which  were  brought  the  furs  most 
sought  for  by  the  traders.  "  Although  I  have 
found  but  little  authority  for  other  than  the  river 
courses,"  says  Steward,  "I  believe  that  not  all  the 
French  goods  were  brought  up  the  Fox  River  to 
Maramech  and  the  other  towns  along  the  Fox  Riv- 


*  Steward  :     "Lost  Maramech  and  Earliest  Chicago." 


114  Starved  Rock 

er.  Many  were  brought  from  Fort  St.  Louis  that 
from  its  establishment  by  La  Salle  to  about  1700 
was  an  entrepot :  but  much  was  carried  from  the 
lake  near  where  is  now  Racine,  to  the  little  lakes 
where  starts  the  Fox  River. ' ' 

At  Maramech,  undoubtedly  several  trails  met 
then  as  they  did  later.  Over  them  moved  the  rov- 
ing tribes  and  bands  of  white  and  half-breed  hunt- 
ers ;  and  the  branch  of  the  Miamis  that  were  at  the 
village  and  the  traders  lodged  there  received  from 
the  French  posts  the  goods  they  needed.  From  the 
Rock  the  Maramech  trail  ran  along  the  north  side 
of  Illinios  River  over  the  great  prairie,  or  to  the 
mouth  of  Fox  River  and  then  along  the  west  bank 
of  that  stream,  meeting  at  Maramech  the  trail  to 
La  Salle's  fort  at  Chicago;  and  it  is  possible  that 
when  Tonty's  faithful  Shawanoes  returned  from 
Chicago,  that  cold  January,  heavily  burdened  with 
the  ammunition  and  merchandise  that  had  made 
three  canoe  loads  on  the  lakes,  they  may  have  fol- 
lowed the  trail  to  Maramech,  on  reaching  which 
they  could  enjoy  the  hospitality  of  their  Miami 
friends  for  a  brief  rest  to  break  the  killing  fa- 
tigue of  such  a  task  of  carrying  in  mid- winter. 

Though  the  snow  lay  thick  that  winter  over  the 
land  of  the  Illinois,  and  the  frost  held  the  rivers 
in  its  grip,  "  there  was  occasional  excitement, 
moreover,  at  the  departure  and  return  of  savage 


Tonty  115 

war  parties  which  kept  up  the  contest  with  the 
Iroquois.  In  the  month  of  January  (1688)  alone 
the  Abbe  Cavelier  saw  thirteen  such  expeditions 
of  Illinois  Indians  set  out  from  Fort  St.  Louis, 
two  of  forty  and  eleven  of  twenty  warriors  each, 
or  three  hundred  in  all.  The  Miamis  put  in  the 
field  one  band  of  eighty  and  several  smaller  ones, 
while  the  Shawanoes  sent  several,  numbering  one 
hundred  and  fifty  in  all.  At  least  one  of  the  Illi- 
nois parties  returned  to  the  Fort  with  Iroquois 
prisoners,  of  whom  six  were  made  slaves  and  six 
were  burned  at  the  stake.  During  that  winter 
and  spring  the  Illinois  furnished  tangible  proofs, 
presumably  scalps,  that  they  had  put  to  death  two 
hundred  and  forty  persons  among  the  Iroquois  in 
their  own  land.*  Tonty  relates  that  the  Five  Na- 
tions attempted  to  make  reprisals,  but  were  val- 
iantly withstood  by  the  Illinois  who  had  greatly 
improved  in  the  art  of  war  under  French  guidance, 
and  who  so  harried  the  Senecas  that  this  tribe 
was  obliged  to  remain  in  its  villages  all  winter  and 
refrain  from  raids  upon  the  Canadian  settlements. 
Furthermore,  he  says,  "Our  Illinois  have  captured 
and  brought  to  Fort  St.  Louis  eighty  Iroquois 
slaves."  And  he  adds,  with  a  ferocious  exultation 
for  which  his  time  and  situation  were  responsible, 
"we  have  made  a  good  broiling  of  them." 


*  Margry  :     Mason's  paraphrase  in  "Land  of  the  Illinois. 


116  Starved  Rock 

One  might  dwell  longer  upon  the  life  at  the  Rock 
during  this  winter  of  1687-88,  for  it  was  the  most 
comfortable  and  relaxing  resting  time  the  inde- 
fatigable Tonty  had  enjoyed  in  many  years.  Here 
among  his  friends,  gentlemen  of  his  own  country 
and  class,  his  apprehensions  as  to  La  Salle  set  at 
rest  by  the  equivocations  of  the  Abbe  Cavelier  and 
his  companions,  assured  of  the  protection  and  co- 
operation of  a  colonial  government  to  which  he 
had  just  rendered  a  signal  service,  with  his  sav- 
age allies  at  peace  among  themselves  and  devoted 
to  his  service,  and  the  trading  post  piling  up  riches 
in  peltry  held  in  trust  against  his  patron's  return 
to  the  Rock  to  claim  his  own,  Tonty  had  every  rea- 
son to  be  at  his  ease  and  to  rest  in  the  confidence 
that  La  Salle's  plans,  political  and  commercial, 
with  which  he  was  in  full  sympathy,  were  upon  the 
eve  of  their  consummation. 

And  so  the  winter  passed,  agreeably  enough  to 
all  who  were  at  the  Rock,  then  at  the  very  height 
of  its  prestige,  its  power  and  its  material  pros- 
perity. The  unscrupulous  Abbe  was  no  doubt  an 
exception  to  the  general  content  that  everywhere 
surrounded  him.  Although  the  Abbe  had  not  hesi- 
tated to  tell  Couture  and  DeLaunay  on  the  Ar- 
kansas of  La  Salle's  fate,  when  the  fugitives  came 
to  the  Rock  and  met  Tonty  face  to  face,  "that  brave 
gentleman  who  was  always  inseparably  attached 


Tonty  117 

to  the  interest  of  the  Sieur  de  la  Salle,"  they  con- 
cealed the  facts,  "it  being  our  duty,"  adds  Douay,* 
"to  give  the  first  news  to  the  court."  Very  natur- 
ally the  Abbe  dreaded  the  possibility  that  Cou- 
ture and  De  Launay  might  come  to  the  Rock  and 
expose  his  duplicity  and  bring  upon  himself  and 
his  party  the  wrath  and  well  deserved  contempt 
of  their  generous  host. 

The  Abbe,  therefore,  prepared  to  leave  the  Rock 
at  the  first  sign  of  spring;  and  when  March  31 
came,  having  obtained  from  Tonty  on  La  Salle's 
account  the  necessary  funds  for  the  journey  to 
France  and  2,652  livres  (francs)  in  payment  of 
La  Salle's  debt  to  his  brother,  the  Abbe  with  the 
little  party  started  from  the  Rock  for  Quebec  and 
France,  accompanied  by  Boisrondet,  one  of  the 
most  faithful  of  La  Salle's  men,  who  after  many 
years  in  the  wilderness  was  going  home  to  a  well 
earned  and  well  deserved  rest.  They  took  with 
them  five  Indians,— one  from  a  Missouri  tribe, 
"who  had  learned  to  speak  French  and  had  been 
baptised,"  says  Joutel,"  but  was  no  better  Christian 
for  all  that."  After  many  adventures  by  the  way, 
the  entire  party  landed  safely  at  Rochelle  on  Octo- 
ber 9,  1688.  Boisrondet  went  to  his  native  village 
of  Orleans,  taking  the  young  Indian  convert  with 
him;  Joutel  and  two  Illinois  remained  at  Rouen, 


*Le  Clerq:     "First  Establishment  of  the  Faith  in  New  France." 


118  Starved  Rock 

while  Douay,  the  Abbe  and  two  Indians  went  to 
Paris  and  made  their  report— too  late  to  save  a 
single  soul  alive  of  the  Texas  colony,  had  the 
government  been  disposed  to  attempt  the  succor 
of  the  unfortunates,  which  it  was  not.  The  Indians 
were  eventually  returned  to  Canada. 

It  was  not  until  the  following  September  (1688) 
that  Tonty  learned  the  truth  concerning  La  Salle, 
when  Couture  came  to  the  Rock  from  the  Arkan- 
sas. We  may  imagine  Tonty 's  wrath  and  indigna- 
tion, and  also  his  deep  regret  that  he  could  not  have 
gone,  a  year  before,  to  the  rescue  of  the  unhappy 
colony.  It  might  not  be  too  late,  even  now,  he 
thought ;  and  to  think  was  to  act.  He  started  Cou- 
ture for  Montreal  to  obtain  Denonville's  permis- 
sion to  attempt  the  rescue;  but  unfortunately  an 
accident  compelled  Couture  to  return  to  the  Rock 
with  his  mission  unexecuted.  Tonty  had,  however, 
in  the  meantime  received  word  from  Denonville 
that  there  was  peace  with  the  Iroquois  and  war 
with  Spain.  This  news  left  Tonty  free  to  act  on 
his  own  account.  He  had  already  sent  De  la  Tou- 
rette  in  advance  as  hunter  to  provision  the  expedi- 
tion ;  but  when  La  Forest  did  not  appear  to  take 
command  at  the  Rock  during  his  absence,  Tonty 
made  De  la  Tourette,  "an  intelligent  lad,"  com- 
mander ;  while  he  himself  with  five  Frenchmen  and 
a  Shawanoe,  with  other  Indians,  on  December  3, 


Tonty  119 

left  the  Rock  for  the  Gulf  in  a  pirogue,  or  canoe 
made  from  a  log.      , 

The  details  of  this  journey  need  not  detain  us 
here ;  suffice  it  to  say  that  Tonty  accomplished  noth- 
ing by  the  quest  save  that  he  was  able  to  ease  his 
own  conscience  with  the  thought  that  he  had  done 
his  utmost  to  save  those,  some  of  whom  he  might 
perhaps  have  saved  had  the  Abbe  Cavelier  been 
truthful  when  he  first  reached  the  Rock;  but  he 
was  able  to  find  his  own  rest  only  after  sufferings 
the  most  intense  he  had  ever  experienced;  and  it 
was  late  in  the  same  year  (1688)  that  he  was  able 
again  to  reach  the  Rock  which  continued  to  be  his 
home  for  the  next  twelve  years. 

After  the  death  of  La  Salle  Fort  St.  Louis— the 
Rock— continued  to  be  the  center  of  French  power 
and  influence  in  the  Mississippi  Valley  for  at  least 
a  decade.  Tonty  remained  in  command  by  virtue 
of  the  King's  order  of  1685,  and  he  exercised  a 
wide  jurisdiction.  When,  however,  the  Company 
of  Foot  in  which  he  held  his  commission  as  captain 
(without  pay,  for  he  never  received  any)  was  dis- 
banded, being  without  employment  as  a  soldier, 
he  addressed  a  petition  to  the  Minister,  Count  de 
Pontchartrain,  reciting  his  services  in  the  West 
and  asking  for  a  new  command.  The  petition  being 
glowingly  endorsed  by  Count  Frontenac,  again 
governor  of  Canada,  who  always  took  thought  for 


120  Starved  Rock 

his  friends  and  the  men  faithful  to  the  government, 
Tonty,  jointly  with  La  Forest,  was  granted  the 
proprietorship  of  Fort  St.  Loilis,  where  they  car- 
ried on  a  profitable  trade  in  peltries  for  some  years ; 
La  Forest  trading  at  the  Chicago  post  and  Tonty 
at  the  Rock. 

In  1699,  when  the  other  forts  in  the  West  were 
ordered  abandoned,  an  exception  was  made  in  fa- 
vor of  Fort  St.  Louis.  Tonty  and  La  Forest  were 
permitted  to  bring  from  Montreal  annually  two 
canoes  of  goods  and  twelve  men  were  allowed  for 
maintenance  of  the  Fort.  These  concessions  were 
as  much  a  matter  of  state  policy  as  of  favor  to  two 
faithful  servants  of  the  government,  however ;  for 
Frontenac,  at  least,  expansionist  as  he  was  and 
ever  had  been,  realized  better  than  did  the  court 
that  the  English  traders  and  settlers  were  crossing 
the  Alleghenies  and  making  permanent  homes  in 
the  great  valleys  claimed  by  the  French;  and  he 
knew  what  that  meant  to  the  fortunes  of  New 
France.  As  provincial  governor  he  understood 
fully  the  scope  of  La  Salle's  policy  and  approved 
it ;  but  in  the  face  of  the  complaints  of  the  church 
of  libertinage  in  the  woods  and  of  debauchery  at 
the  forts,  Frontenac  was  able  only  with  difficulty  to 
retain  garrisons  at  some  of  the  forts  in  the  West, 
most  important  of  which,  after  Mackinac,  he  esti- 
mated Fort  St.  Louis,  which  was  the  sole  point 


Tonty  121 

from  which  to  resist  the  entrance  of  the  English 
into  the  West.  Tonty  also,  trained  to  La  Salle's 
policy  and  plan  of  possession,  and  having  the  most 
intimate  knowledge  of  conditions  in  the  West,  as 
well  as  being  himself  a  trained  strategist,  saw  that 
the  " English  peril"  to  the  great  valley,  already 
confronting  his  government,  was  more  real  than 
the  court  was  willing  to  concede ;  and  it  was  on  his 
urgent  advice  to  the  government  that  Pierre  le 
Moyne,  Sieur  d'  Iberville,  was  sent  to  take  posses- 
sion of  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  which  he  did 
just  in  time;  for  the  English  had  themselves  de- 
cided to  do  this,  and  their  ships,  two  years  later,  ac- 
tually appeared  in  the  Gulf  for  that  purpose. 

In  1699  an  expedition  under  Montigny,  with  St. 
Cosine*  as  " black  gown"  and  historian  attached, 
made  a  journey  of  political' enquiry  to  the  Missis- 
sippi. At  the  Rock  in  November  they  obtained  the 
services  of  Tonty  as  guide,  who  went  with  them  as 
far  as  the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  impressing 
them  the  while,  as  he  did  all  with  whom  he  came 
in  contact,  that  no  man  then  knew  the  country  bet- 
ter or  as  well  as' he,  nor  was  more  " beloved  and 


*St.  Come  (Jean  Francois  Buisson  de)  with  Francoise  Jolliet  de 
Montigny  and  Antoine  Dairon  were  selected  in  the  autumn  of  1698  to 
open  a  mission  in  the  west  for  the  Seminary.  He  was  a  Canadian, 
born  in  February,  1667;  ordained  at  the  age  of  23.  He  labored  at 
Cahokia  and  at  Natchez;  and  while  on  a  voyage  down  the  Mississippi 
was  murdered  by  Chetimachas  late  in  the  year  1702. — 65  Jesuit 
Relations,  262. 


122  Starved  Rock 

feared  by  all  the  tribes. "  St.  Gosme  says  of  him: 
"I  cannot,  Monseigneur  [the  Bishop  of  Quebec], 
express  our  obligations  to  him;  he  guided  us  as  far 
as  the  Arkansas,  and  gave  us  much  pleasure  on  the 
way.  He  facilitated  our  course  through  several 
nations,  winning  us  the  friendship  of  some  and 
intimidating  those  who  from  jealousy  or  desire  of 
plunder  had  wished  to  oppose  our  voyage ;  he  has 
not  only  done  the  duty  of  a  brave  man,  but  also 
discharged  the  functions  of  a  zealous  missionary. 
He  quieted  the  minds  of  our  employes  in  the  little 
vagaries  they  might  have ;  he  supported  us  by  his 
example  in  the  exercises  of  devotion  which  the 
voyage  permitted  us  to  perform,  very  often  ap- 
proaching the  Sacrament." 

Tonty  returned  to  Port  St,  Louis  and  to  the  con- 
duct of  his  business  as  a  fur  trader,  but  the  others 
went  on  to  the  Gulf. 

Again  in  1700  Father  Gravier  made  and  recorded 
his  impressions  of  a  similar  journey  for  a  similar 
purpose.  He  observed  that  the  Englishmen  were 
already  in  the  Tennessee  country,  and  were  trading 
with  the  Mohegans  and  other  Indians  who  had  been 
driven  westward  by  approaching  English  settle- 
ments. He  found  English  guns  among  all  the  na- 
tives. The  Father  is  not  sure  there  is  danger  in 
this,  however.  "I  do  not  know  what  our  court  will 
decide  about  the  Mississippi,  if  no  silver  mines  are 


Tonty  123 

found,"  he  says;  "for  our  government  does  not 
seek  lands  to  cultivate."* 

In  spite  of  these  signals  of  a  coming  struggle, 
the  court  soon  after  decided  upon  its  course. 
Frontenac  was  dead  (November  25,  1698),  and  a 
new  party  was  in  control  in  New  France.  The  ag- 
gressive policy  of  the  great  governor  and  of  his 
brilliant  lieutenants,  La  Salle,  Tonty,  La  Forest, 
Du  Lhut,  Perrot,  Cadillac,  etc.,  was  reversed.  Cal- 
lieres,  Frontenac 's  successor,  while  firm  enough  as 
regards  the  Iroquois,  had  but  a  faint  grasp  of  the 
French  problem  in  America,  and  so  was  disposed 
to  abandon  rather  than  to  continue  activity  in  the 
West.  His  policy  was  to  let  the  Indians  fight  their 
own  battles,  and  by  withdrawing  the  officers  from 
the  forts  thus  compel  the  Indians  to  go  to  Mon- 
treal to  trade.  And  yielding  to  the  governor's  rep- 
resentations, "the  court  at  Versailles  gave  orders 
in  conformity  thereto;  and  from  all  the  Upper 
County, t  first,  and  from  Fort  St.  Louis,  last  of  all, 
the  traders  were  summoned,  conges  revoked,  and 


*La  Sueur  (Pierre  Charles)  also,  in  1699,  found  an  Englishman  at 
the  mouth  of  the  Arkansas,  "for  even  in  this  closing  year  of  the 
seventeenth  century  English  rivalry  had  commenced  on  the  lower 
Mississippi." — Thwaites  :     "France  in  America." 

f  As  to  the  abandonment  of  Mackinac  and  the  other  advanced  posts, 
Charlevoix  (Vol.  4,  p.  276,  "History  of  New  France,"  Shea's  transla- 
tion) says  he  does  not  know  who  was  responsible  for  it,  but  of  its  un- 
wisdom he  says :  "The  excursions  of  the  Canadians  into  new  coun- 
tries certainly  ruined  the  commerce  of  New  France,  rendered  the  na- 
tion contemptible  among  all  the  tribes  on  the  continent,  and  raised  an 


124  Starved  Bock 

officers  ordered  home."  This  order  came  to  La 
Forest  at  Fort  St.  Louis  in  1702,  directing  him  to 
return  to  Canada  and  Tonty  to  join  D 'Iberville  on 
the  Mississippi,  whither  Tonty  had  already  gone 
(1700)  with  twenty  men. 

And  thus  it  was  that  "  Tonty  finally  passed  from 
the  country  of  the  Illinois,  where  he  had  been  a 
conspicuous  and  honorable  figure  for  twenty  years 
and  had  achieved  for  himself  a  name  which  will 
outlast  the  effacing  fingers  of  time."* 

The  decline  of  the  Rock  in  commercial  impor- 
tance followed  the  order  to  abandon  the  Port  and 
was  due  to  the  opening  made  in  consequence  of  it 
of  a  new  outlet  for  the  furs  of  the  Upper  Country 
by  way  of  the  Mississippi  (to  which  Charlevoix 
referred  in  note  above)  and  to  the  closing  of  the 
Wisconsin  River  waterway  by  the  hostile  Foxes. 


insurmountable  obstacle  to  the  progress  of  religion.  Still,  the  reme- 
dies which  his  majesty  sought  to  apply  were  utterly  impracticable  in 
the  actual  position  of  the  colony,  since  it  is  certain  that  the  English 
would  have  seized  the  advance  posts  as  soon  as  we  evacuated  them, 
and  we  should  thus  at  once  have  had  all  the  tribes  gathered  near 
the  posts  by  our  influence.  Now  if  these  tribes  were  joined  to  the  Iro- 
quois and  the  English,  one  single  campaign  would  suffice  to  expel  the 
French  from  New  France." 

*  Wallace  :  "Illinois  and  Louisiana  Under  French  Rule." — Tonty 
died  of  yellow  fever  at  Mobile  in  1704.  Tonty  may  be  called  the  Father 
of  Louisiana,  being  the  first  man  after  La  Salle  to  urge  the  settlement 
of  the  lower  Mississippi.  It  was  through  him  that  English  control 
of  that  part  of  our  country  was  postponed  for  over  a  hundred  years,  or 
until  the  purchase  by  Jefferson.  "France  obtained,  under  Providence, 
the  guardianship  of  Louisiana,  not,  as  it  proved,  for  its  own  benefit, 
but  rather  as  a  trustee  for  the  infant  nation  by  which  it  was  one  day 
to  be  inherited." — Bancroft:  "History  of  U.  S." 


Tonty  125 

The  voyageurs  had  refused  to  obey  the  order  of 
Governor  Calliers  to  return  to  Canada  with 
the  officers;  and  going  down  the  Mississippi 
they  joined  the  settlers  in  their  new  locations— at 
Cahokia,  originally  the  mission  to  the  Tamaroas, 
founded  by  Father  Pinet  in  1698;  at  Kaskaskia, 
founded  in  1700;  and  at  the  mouth  of  the  Ohio, 
where  in  1702  Juchereau  de  St.  Denis  placed  a  trad- 
ing post,  all  of  which  settlements  looked  to  the  new 
settlements  on  the  Gulf  as  their  entrepot  for  sup- 
plies and  as  outlets  for  their  products  in  exchange. 
The  commerical  effect  of  this  change  on  the  current 
of  the  trade  of  the  Upper  Country  was  immediately 
felt  in  Canada,  whose  merchants  saw  a  commercial 
rival  rising  in  the  "West ;  but  of  the  political  conse- 
quences involved  the  government  then  had  little 
suspicion. 

The  Rock  remained,  however,  for  many  years 
thereafter  the  rendezvous  of  licensed  and  illicit 
traders ;  in  fact,  it  never  has  been  without  its  white 
occupants,  literally  or  as  trappers  abiding  in  its 
immediate  vicinity,  from  Marquette's  day  to  this. 
In  1718  it  had  again  a  quasi-official  recognition  as 
the  authorized  home  of  French  traders  from  Can- 
ada, but  the  old  trade  of  the  Rock  had  gone  to  the 
Mississippi  permanently ;  and  when  in  1721  Charle- 
voix made  the  Rock  a  visit,  he  found  only  the  ruins 
of  its  palisades  and  rough  cabins. 


126 


Starved  Bock 


And  so  for  the  moment  we,  too,  will  abandon 
the  Rock,  while  waiting  for  the  shifting  from  the 
East  to  the  West  of  the  scene  of  the  great  drama  of 
the  conflict  of  France  and  England  for  the  posses- 
sion of  North  America,  when  Starved  Rock  again 
becomes  the  center  of  interest  in  the  West. 


Looking  from  Starved  Eock 
Eastward. 


THE  MISSION. 

"Ad   Majorem   Dei   Gloriam." 

— Motto:    Society  of  Jesus. 

The  bells  of  the  Roman  mission 

That  call  from  their  turrets  twain 
To  the  boatman  on  the  river, 

To  the  hunter  on  the  plain. 

—Whittier. 

THE  IMMACULATE  CONCEPTION. 

The  earlier  Catholic  missionaries  to  the  Indians 
of  North  America  were  to  a  degree  distinguished 
for  "  heroic  self-devotion,  energy  of  purpose,  purity 
of  motive,  holiness  of  design."  Nowhere  can  be 
found  "more  that  is  sublime  even  to  eyes  blinded  by 
the  glare  of  human  greatness"  than  in  the  biog- 
raphies of  these  martyrs  of  the  American  wilder- 
ness. Parkman's  volume,  "The  Jesuits  in  North 
America,"  is  a  most  dramatic  recital  of  Christian 
heroism  and  zeal  which  has  not  been  surpassed  by 
any  age  of  the  church  in  any  clime.  The  "apostles 
to  the  heathen"  who  sacrificed  all  things,  suffered 
all  things,  endured  all  things,  had  not  all  passed 
from  earth  until  these  men,  at  least,  had  met  death 
for  Christ's  sake  and  His  church. 

The  missionaries  to  the  West  were  no  less  famous 
than  those  who  immortalized  themselves  among  the 

127 


128  Starved  Bock 


Iroquois  and  the  savages  of  Maine.  They  were 
"  among  the  best  and  purest  of  their  order,  burning 
with  zeal  for  the  salvation  of  souls  and  the  gain- 
ing of  an  immortal  crown,"  and  they  " toiled  and 
suffered  with  self-sacrificing  devotion  which  ex- 
torts a  tribute  of  admiration  even  from  sectarian 
bigotry.  While  the  colder  apostles  of  Protestantism 
labored  upon  the  outskirts  of  heathendom,  these 
champions  of  the  Cross  pierced  the  very  heart  of  its 
dark  and  dreary  domain,  confronting  death  at  every 
step  and  well  repaid  for  all  could  they  but  sprinkle 
a  few  drops  of  water  on  the  forehead  of  a  dying 
child  or  hang  a  gilded  crucifix  round  the  neck  of 
some  warrior,"*  pleased  with  but  unappreciative 
of  the  significance  of  the  gift. 

We  have  seen  how  Marquette  longed  to  preach 
to  the  Illinois.  As  early  as  1670,  while  at  the  Sault, 
he  studied  the  Illinois  dialects  with  an  Illinois  cap- 
tive in  order  to  go  to  them  in  their  own  country. 
We  have  seen,  too,  how  when  he  visited  them  with 
Jolliet  at  their  great  town,  called  Kaskaskia,  near 
Fort  St.  Louis,  they  made  him  promise  to  return 
and  instruct  them.  It  was,  then,  as  a  blessed  privi- 
lege, that  in  the  fall  of  1674,  while  at  St.  Xavier,  he 
received  the  order  to  establish  a  mission  among  the 
Illinois. 

Accordingly,  on  October  25,  thinking  himself 


♦Parkman:     "Conspiracy  of  Pontiac." 


The  Mission  129 

well  enough  to  do  so,  lie  left  the  missipn  at  St.  Xav- 
ier  for  the  Illinois.  He  had  as  his  companions  two 
Frenchmen,  one  of  whom  had  been  with  him  and 
Jolliet  in  1673,  and  at  Sturgeon  Bay  they  were 
joined  by  several  canoes  of  Illinois  and  Pottawat- 
omies.  Coasting  Lake  Michigan  at  that  season,  in 
a  frail  canoe  proved,  however,  so  exhausting  a  task 
that  on  reaching  Chicago  River,  which  he  did  on 
December  4,  Marquette's  old  malady,  dysentery 
with  hemorrhage,  had  returned,  and  he  was  com- 
pelled to  remain  at  the  portage  for  the  winter.  The 
season  was  very  severe,  and  Marquette's  home  was 
but  a  miserable  cabin  of  some  unknown  trapper  or 
fur  trader,  located  near  the  portage  to  the  Des- 
plaines,  some  two  miles  up  the  river.*  Here  he  was 
ministered  to  by  his  men  and  by  the  sympathetic 
Indians,  as  well  as  by  roving  woodsmen,  as  best 
they  could.  Although  he  gained  little  strength  dur- 
ing the  winter,  when  early  spring  came  (March  29, 
1675),  he  resumed  his  journey,  reaching  the  Ill- 
inois town  on  April  8.  Sick  unto  death,  he  never- 
theless proceeded  with  his  long  sought  duty,  and 
founded  his  mission,  to  which  he  gave  his  favorite 
name,  "  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed 
Virgin,"!  the  first  Christian  church  planted  in 


*  A  simple  marker  has  lately  been  erected,  in  the  form  of  a  cross, 
to  indicate  the  supposed  site  of  this  cabin. 

t  Marquette  :  ''Unfinished  Diary,"  the  water-stained  MSS.  of  which 
is  now  held  as  a  sacred  relic  at  St.  Mary's  College,  Montreal. 


130  Starved  Rock 

the  Misissippd  Valley,  which  through  many  vicis- 
situdes of  time  and  place  has  never  wholly  ceased 
to  be.  But  as  continued  illness  brought  the  reali- 
zation that  his  end  was  approaching,  he  cut  short 
his  work  through  physical  inability  to  continue  it. 
For  several  days  he  taught  the  Indians  in  their 
cabins  and  in  the  council,  and  on  Holy  Thursday 
he  preached  to  the  assembled  tribes  to  the  number 
of  two  thousand  on  the  meadow  near  the  town, 
where  he  had  erected  a  rude  altar  and  exhibited 
pictures  of  the  Virgin,  explaining  their  significance 
and  exhorting  with  rare  eloquence  the  chiefs  and 
the  people  to  embrace  Christianity. 

This  was  the  end  of  his  life's  work.  Knowing 
death  to  be  near  to  him  and  desiring  to  die  if  pos- 
sible at  St.  Ignace,  immediately  after  Easter 
(April  14  that  year)  he  bade  his  loved  Illinois 
farewell,  and  sustained  by  his  faithful  companions, 
painfully  made  his  way  toward  the  north,  taking 
the  route  via  the  Kankakee  and  St.  Joseph  Rivers 
and  the  eastern  shore. 

After  infinite  suffering  by  Marquette,  only 
slightly  relieved  by  the  devotion  of  his  men,  the 
party  at  length  reached  the  mouth  of  Marquette 
River,  or  inlet,  where  now  is  the  city  of  Ludington, 
Mich.  He  had  spoken  much  of  his  approaching 
end  "with  so  great  tranquillity  and  presence  of 
mind  that  one  might  have  supposed  that  he  was 


The  Mission 


131 


concerned  with  the  death  of  some  other  person  and 
not  his  own";  and  seeing  here  an  " eminence  that 
he  deemed  well  suited  to  the  place  of  his  inter- 
ment," he  told  his  people  that  "that  was  the  place 
of  his  last  repose."    There  on  May  18,  1675,  Mar- 


Approximate   Site   op   the   Mission   of   the   Immaculate 
Conception  to  the  Illinois. 

quette  died,  passing  to  his  rest  "with  a  counte- 
nance beaming  and  all  aglow."  He  expired  with- 
out a  struggle  "and  so  gently  it  might  have  been 
regarded  as  a  pleasant  sleep."* 


*Dablon:    "Relation  of  1675. 


132  Starved  Rock 

His  body  was  buried  as  he  had  directed,  at  a 
spot  overlooking  the  lake;  but  a  year  later  his 
Indian  friends  from  Mackinac  removed  the  bones 
to  St.  Ignace  where  they  were  again  buried  with 
some  ceremony  in  a  vault  made  under  the  floor  of 
the  log  chapel.  In  the  process  of  time,  this  mis- 
sion having  been  abandoned,  the  log  church  was 
burned  in  1700,  and  Marquette's  resting  place  was 
forgotten.  It  was  discovered,  however,  in  1877  by 
Rev.  Father  Edward  Jacker,  a  missionary  in 
charge  at  St.  Ignace,  through  whose  activity  a 
monument  has  since  been  erected  to  the  devoted 
priest's  memory.  Some  parts  of  his  remains -still 
repose  at  St.  Ignace,  while  others  are  at  Marquette 
College,  Milwaukee.* 

Thus  died  at  the  age  of  thirty-eight  one  of  the 
noblest  and  purest  men  whose  names  adorn  the 
annals  of  the  Northwest.  A  man  of  cheerful,  joy- 
ous disposition,  playful  in  his  manner,  "  whose  let- 
ters show  us  a  man  of  education,  close  observation, 
sound  sense  and  a  freedom  from  exaggeration," 
while  yet  a  vein  of  humor  breaks  out  in  spite  of 
his  self-command. t  His  unselfish  and  saintly 
life  is  still  an  "  inspiration  to  men  of  every  creed 
and  calling,"  while  his  accomplishments  as  a 
scholar  and  energy  as  a  man  of  action  mark  him  as 
one  of  the  rare  men  of  his  age. 


*  Thwaites  :     "Father  Marquette." 
fKi?:    "Early  Jesuit  Missions." 


The  Mission  133 

After  Marquette  died  Father  Daloes  charged 
himself  with  the  Illinois  mission.  Father  Marest 
in  a  letter  to  Father  Germon,  dated  November  9, 
1712,  written  at  Kaskaskia  (on  the  Mississippi), 
says  Father  Daloes  "was  acquainted  with  the  lan- 
guage of  the  Miamis,  which  approaches  very  near- 
ly to  that  of  the  Illinois.  He,  however,  made  but 
a  short  sojourn,  having  the  idea  while  there  that 
he  should  be  able  to  accomplish  more  in  a  different 
country,  where  indeed  he  ended  his  apostolic  life." 
[No  dates  are  given.] 

Two  years  after  Marquette  the  indefatigable 
Claude  Allouez  was 
sent 
kask 

thus  identifying  with  Starved  Rock  and  the  Illi- 
nois a  name  that  is  famous  in  the  annals  of  the 
Northwest.  Born  at  Toulouse,  Father  Allouez 
went  to  Canada  in  1658,  and  as  early  as  1661  or 
1662  succeeded  the  aged  Father  Menard  at  the  mis- 
sion at  La  Pointe  on  Chaquemagon  Bay,  at  the  ex- 
tremity of  Lake  Superior,  the  southern  shore  of 
which  he  explored  in  part.  In  1669  he  was  sent 
to  the  Mascoutins  on  Green  Bay,  establishing  there 
the  mission  of  St.  Francis  Xavier,  where  De  Pere, 
Wis.,  now  stands.  Later  he  preached  to  the  Foxes 
on  Wolf  River,  but  he  found  them  in  an  ill-humor 
with  the  French,  and  they  received  the  Faith  with 


.e  Allouez  was  . 

to    the    Kas-   /^bAl  cA^^7^ 
:ia     mission,   ^  ^ 


134  Starved  Bock 

shouts  of  derision,  to  the  good  Father's  great  dis- 
tress. When  St.  Lusson  at  the  Sault  made  his 
proclamation  of  possession  of  the  Northwest,  it 
was  Allouez  who  made  the  address  to  the  Indians, 
a  speech  which  is  preserved  by  Dablon  in  the  "  Re- 
lation of  1671." 

In  the  fall  of  1676,  when  at  Green  Bay,  he  re- 
ceived the  order  to  go  to  the  Illinois.  He  set  out 
along  the  western  shore  of  Lake  Michigan,  but  he 
wintered  on  the  way  and  did  not  reach  the  Illinois 
town  until  April  27,  1677,  where  he  was  lodged  in 
the  cabin  of  Marquette.  He  erected  an  altar  in  the 
house  of  the  chief  of  the  tribe  he  meant  to  interest ; 
and  the  sachems,  with  i  l  all  the  people,  being  there 
assembled,  I  told  them,"  he  reports,  "the  object  of 
my  coming  among  them,  namely,  to  preach  the  true 
living  and  immortal  God  and  His  son  Jesus  Christ. 
They  listened  very  attentively  to  my  whole  dis- 
course, and  thanked  me  for  the  trouble  I  took  for 
their  salvation." 

He  describes  the  town  and  its  location  as  we  have 
had  it  before,  making  the  number  of  cabins  three 
hundred  and  fifty-one.  As  to  his  work,  he  says 
that  he  relaid  the  foundation  of  the  Illinois  mis- 
sion by  the  baptism  of  thirty-five  children  and  a 
sick  adult  who  soon  after  died ;  and  that  on  May  3, 
1677,  the  feast  of  the  Invention  of  the  Holy  Cross, 
he  erected  in  the  town  a  cross  twenty-five  feet  high 


The  Mission  135 

and  chanted  the  Vexilla  in  the  presence  of  "a  great 
number  of  Illinois  of  all  tribes.' ' 

Father  Allouez  remained  in  the  Illinois  country 
for  the  remainder  of  his  life ;  but  in  1679  he  retired 
from  the  Illinois  village  at  the  advance  of  La  Salle, 
for  these  men  mutually  disliked  each  other,  and  be- 
took himself  to  the  Mascoutins  at  Chicago  or  to  the 
Miamis  or  other  tribes  who  happened  to  be  in  his 
neighborhood,  remaining  with  them  so  long  as  La 
Salle  himself  was  in  the  country.  In  1684  he  again 
came  to  the  town  and  to  the  Rock  with  Durantaye, 
commandant  at  Mackinac,  during  De  Baugis'  com- 
mand. Again  we  find  him  there  in  1687  when 
Cavelier,  Douay  and  Joutel  were  at  the  Rock ;  but 
as  they  reported  La  Salle  to  be  on  his  way  to  the 
Fort,  Allouez,  although  ill,  retired  among  the 
Miamis.  He  may  have  returned  after  La  Salle's 
death  became  known.  He  died  at  Fort  Miami  in 
1690. 

Allouez  was  one  of  the  ablest  of  all  the  Jesuits 
sent  to  the  Illinois ;  but  he  was  a  cold  man,  whose 
influence  was  due  to  his  intellectual  powers  rather 
than  to  his  ability  to  impress  men  with  the  love  he 
really  bore  to  the  race.  As  a  churchman  of  zeal 
and  piety,  he  was  inferior  to  none  of  his  day ;  while 
as  an  explorer  his  name  will  ever  be  renowned  in 
the  West. 

Although  La  Salle  had  an  aversion  to  the  Jesuits 


136  Starved  Bock 

in  general,  who,  lie  always  believed,  and  with  some 
reason,  were  hostile,  if  not  actively  his  enemies,  and 
a  dislike  to  Allouez  in  particular,  he  was  still  a 
profoundly  religious  man,  and  was  invariably  ac- 
companied in  his  expeditions  by  the  "  Black 
Gowns,"  notably  the  Recollet  fathers  Gabriel  de 
la  Ribourde,  Zenobius  Membre  and  Louis  Henne- 
pin. In  the  year  1680  the  two  former  took  up  the 
work  abandoned  by  Allouez  (and  by  Father  James 
Gravier,  who,  soon  after  Allouez  retired  before  La 
Salle,  made  the  Illinois  a  brief  visit)  and  were  with 
Tonty  on  the  memorable  day  of  the  Iroquois  at- 
tack. After  their  escape  from  the  Iroquois,  Tonty 
and  his  Frenchmen  with  the  two  Fathers  em- 
barked, on  September  18,  for  Green  Bay.  On  the 
next  day,  when  the  men  were  repairing  their  in- 
jured canoe,  the  aged  Father  Ribourde  retired 
apart  to  say  his  breviary ;  and  while  thus  engaged, 
was  set  upon  by  a  party  of  Kickapoos  who  ruth- 
lessly murdered  him— the  first  martyr  to  the 
Church  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  their  mission  was  a  suc- 
cess, in  spite  of  their  piety  and  zeal.  They  baptised 
some  dying  infants,  but  they  made  no  adult  con- 
verts. 

The  real  successor,  therefore,  of  Father  Allouez 
at  Kaskaskia  was  Father  Sebastien  Rale  *  the  most 


*  So   written   by   himself,   although   the   name   is   variously   spelled 


*  bo   written   dv   nimseii,   aitnougn 
Rasles,  Rasle,  Ralle,  Ralle\  and  Rallee 


The  Mission  137 

conspicuous  and  interesting  figure  among  the  later 
French- American  Jesuits.*  He  was  sent  to  the 
Illinois  from  Quebec,  embarking  in  August,  1681, 
and  arriving  in  the  spring  of  1682.  He  was  hearti- 
ly welcomed,  and  a  great  dog  feast  was  served  in 
his  honor— the  greatest  his  hosts  could  extend. 
The  Faith  made  but  little  progress  under  his 
preaching,  however,  as  he  himself  regretfully  ad- 
mitted ;  and  after  about  two  years  he  was  recalled 
to  Quebec  and  again  sent  to  his  original  charge, 
the  Abenakis  on  the  Kennebec  River. 

In  a  letter  written  long  after  his  stay  in  the  Ill- 
inois, it  being  dated  October  15,  1723,  at  Nanrant- 
souak  (now  Norridgewock,  Maine),  Father  Hale 
gives  an  interesting  description  of  the  habits  and 
customs  of  the  Illinois.!  The  country,  too,  at- 
tracted him.  "Of  all  the  nations  in  Canada,' '  he 
says,  "there  are  none  who  live  in  so  great  abun- 
dance of  everything  as  the  Illinois."  Christianity 
he  thinks  would  have  made  greater  progress  among 
the  Illinois  if  polygamy  had  been  permitted.  The 
Indians  all  attended  chapel  services  regularly,  and 
even  their  medicine  men  sent  their  children  "to  be 
instructed  and  baptised.  In  this,"  he  adds,  "con- 
sists the  best  fruits  which  our  mission  at  first  re- 
ceives among  the  Indians,  and  which  is  the  most 


*  Parkman  :    "Fifty  Years  of  Conflict." 

fKiP:    "Early  Jesuit  Missions  in  North  America. 


138  Starved  Rock 

certain;  for  among  the  great  number  of  infants 
whom  we  baptise  not  a  year  passes  but  many  die 
before  they  are  able  to  use  their  reason.  But  even 
among  the  adults,  the  greater  part  are  so  fervent 
and  so  attached  to  the  Prayer  [Christianity]  that 
they  will  suffer  the  most  cruel  death  sooner  than 
abandon  it."  One  happy  circumstance  he  notes 
in  favor  of  the  Illinois :  they  are  so  far  distant  from 
Quebec  they  cannot  obtain  liquor  (the  one  draw- 
back to  life  in  Illinois  noted  by  Joutel) . 

Father  Rale's  career  at  Norridgewock  is  told  in 
a  spirited  chapter  by  Parkman  in  his  "  Fifty  Years 
of  Conflict."  Rale  was  an  intense  partisan  of 
France,  and  could  not  reconcile  himself  to  the  po- 
litical cession  of  his  village  and  mission  to  the  Eng- 
lish of  Massachusetts;  and  in  the  course  of  the 
petty  wars  that  ensued  on  the  border,  instigated 
in  large  measure  by  himself,*  he  was  killed  during 
an  attack  on  Norridgewock  by  the  Massachusetts 
men  in  August,  1724. 

Father  Rale  is  the  " weary  priest"  of  Whittier's 
narrative  poem,  "Mogg  Megone"— 

Ah,  weary  priest — with  pale  hands  pressed 

On  thy  throbbing  brow  of  pain, 
Baffled  in  thy  life-long  quest, 

Overworn  with  toiling  vain, 


*Rale  was  the  last  of  that  devoted  order,  who  in  the  wilds  of 
America  had  labored  to  attain  simultaneously  two  incompatible  ob- 
jects— a  spiritual  kingdom  for  a  heavenly  Master,  and  a  temporal  one 
for  an  earthly  sovereign. — Emma  Willard:  "History  of  the  United 
States." 


The  Mission  139 

How  ill  thy  troubled  musings  fit 

The  holy  quiet  of  a  breast 

With  the  Dove  of  Peace  at  rest, 
Sweetly  brooding  over  it. 

After  Father  Rale,  Allouez,  as  we  have  seen,  re- 
turned and  was  a  most  attentive  ministrant  to  the 
Kaskaskias,  his  absences  being  such  as  timed  with 
the  presence  or  anticipated  coming  of  La  Salle. 
Doubtless  also  the  Abbe  Cavelier  and  Father  Douay 
exercised  their  priestly  office  during  the  winter  of 
1687-88,  when  they  were  guests  at  the  Rock. 

Father  Gravier  came  a  second  time  to  the  Kas- 
kaskia  mission  in  March,  1684,  and  built  a  chapel 
within  the  Fort  on  Starved  Rock,  by  Tonty's  per- 
mission, probably  the  first  chapel  on  the  Rock.  He 
also  built  a  second  chapel  outside  the  Fort  among 
the  Indians,  and  "planted  before  it  a  towering 
cross  amid  the  shouts  and  musketry  of  the 
French."  He  remained  in  general  charge  of  the 
mission  until  about  February,  1694,  when  he  was 
recalled  to  Mackinac. 

Father  Gravier  is  regarded  as  the  most  success- 
ful missionary  to  the  Illinois  in  their  ancient  seat. 
He  first  investigated  the  principles  of  their  lan- 
guage and  reduced  them  to  grammatical  rules,  so 
that,  says  Father  Marest,  "we  have  since  only  been 
obliged  to  bring  to  perfection  what  he  began  with 
so  great  success."  Father  Gravier,  as  Marest 
further  tells  us,  "had  at  first  much  to  suffer  from 


140  Starved  Bock 

their  medicine  men,  and  his  life  was  exposed  to 
continual  dangers ;  but  nothing  repulsed  him,  and 
he  surmounted  all  these  obstacles  by  his  patience 
and  mildness."*  Although  he  made  among  the 
Peorias  a  number  of  converts,  who  assembled  even 
by  themselves  for  morning  and  evening  prayer,  the 
head  chief  opposed  him  and  the  medicine  men  ac- 
cused him  of  poisoning  the  dying  adults  whom  he 
baptised.! 

As  a  missionary  to  the  Illinois,  Father  Gravier 
was  not  a  little  assisted  by  Mary,  daughter  of  the 
head  chief  and  the  wife  of  Michael  Ako,  whom  La 
Salle  sent  to  the  Mississippi,  accompanied  by 
Father  Hennepin.  On  his  return  to  the  Illinois, 
Ako  seems  to  have  lived  as  a  trader,  probably  in 
the  employ  of  Tonty,  at  the  Bock,  or  in  the  town, 
and  wished  to  marry  the  Indian  girl  against  her 
will  but  with  her  father's  consent.  Father  Gravier 
sided  with  the  maiden  and  suffered  many  indigni- 
ties therefor  from  both  the  Indians  and  the 
French.  The  chief  abused  the  daughter  also  for 
her  obstinacy,  and  not  only  ordered  the  converts 
to  remain  away  from  chapel  services,  but  at- 
tempted to  break  up  the  latter  by  force.  Mary  at 
length  yielded  to  her  parent's  wish  in  the  hope  that 
she  might,  by  this  self-sacrifice,  be  the  means  of 


*  Kip  :     "Early  Jesuit  Missions." 

f  Shea  :    "Catholic  Missions  to  the  Indian  Tribes  of  the  U.  S. 


The  Mission  141 

bringing  both  Ako  and  her  parents  into  the  fold  of 
Christ.  Ultimately  her  wish,  we  are  told  by  Dr. 
Shea,  in  a  sympathetic  chapter,*  was  fully  grati- 
fied, as  she  became  the  means  of  bringing  not  only 
Ako  and  her  father,  the  chief,  but  many  other  souls 
to  the  church.  Indeed,  so  great  was  the  impulse  to 
the  good  Father's  work,  given  by  these  conversions 
through  the  instrumentality  of  Mme.  Ako  and  her 
work  among  the  children,  that  Father  Gravier 
"had  three-fourths  of  the  Kaskaskia  village 
crowded  into  his  cabin,  young  and  old,  chief  and 
matrons,  all  ready  to  answer  the  questions  of  the 
Catechism  and  eager  to  receive  a  token  of  his  ap- 
proval, while  the  children,  day  and  night,  sang  in 
the  streets  of  the  village  the  hymns  which  he  con- 
posed,  embodying  the  truths  of  Christianity,  "t 
During  eight  months  of  1693  he  baptised  two  hun- 
dred and  six  souls,  many  of  them  infants,  whom, 
we  are  told,  "he  was  enabled  to  bathe  in  the  sac- 
ramental water  only  by  stratagem." 

Father  Gravier  when  recalled  to  Mackinac  was 


*Shea:     "Catholic  Missions,"  etc. 

f  In  the  oldest  record  of  the  church  found  at  [the  new]  Kaskaskia, 
the  "Register  of  Baptisms  of  the  Mission  of  the  Illinois,  of  the  title 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception  of  the  Blessed  Virgin,"  the  first  entry- 
bears  date  March  20,  1695.  Retaining  the  French  spelling  of  the  names, 
it  reads  as^ follows:  "In  the  year  1695,  March  20th,  I,  Jacques  Gravier, 
of  the  Society  of  Jesus,  baptised  Pierre  Aco,  newly-born  of  P.  Michael 
Aco.  Godfather  was  De  Hautchy,  godmother,  Maria  Aramipinchi- 
coue;  Maria  Joanna,  grandmother  of  the  child." — Breese:  "Early 
History  of  Illinois." 


142  Starved  Rock 

succeeded  by  Fathers  Binneteau  and  Pinet.  Father 
Julien  Binneteau,  like  Father  Rale,  came  from  the 
Abanakis  of  the  Kennebec,  where  he  was  in  1693. 
He  was  on  the  St.  Lawrence  in  1694  and  among 
the  Illinois  in  1695.  They  preached  and  taught 
among  the  various  tribes  at  several  points  along 
the  Illinois  River.  Father  Pinet*  founded  the 
mission  to  the  Tamaroas,  near  the  mouth  of  Illi- 
nois River,  now  known  as  Cahokia.  Father  Marest 
in  his  letterf  quoted  above  says  that  in  company 
with  Fathers  Pinet  and  BinneteauJ  he  labored 


*  Pinet  (Pierre  Francois)  was  born  at  Perigueux,  France,  Nov.  11, 
1660;  novitiate  at  Bordeaux  in  1682;  went  to  Canada  in  1694.  He 
was  first  sent  to  Mackinac,  but  in  1696  came  to  the  Illinois,  founding 
the  mission  of  the  Guardian  Angel  at  Chicago  among  the  Miamis. 
A  year  later  the  mission  was  broken  up,  when  Father  Pinet  came  to 
the  Kaskaskias  for  a  short  time  before  founding  a  mission  among  the 
Tamaroas  at  Cahokia.  This  mission  was  ordered  transferred  from 
the  Jesuits  in  1698  to  the  Seminary  (Seminaire  des  Missions  fitran- 
geres),  but  Pinet  remained  among  the  Tamaroas  until  1702,  when  he 
went  to  the  Kaskaskias  again,  then  at  their  new  home  on  the  Mis- 
sissippi. He  died  at  Cahokia  about  1704. — Thwaites  :  "Jesuit  Re- 
lations/' Vol.  64,  p.  278.    See  also  Shea  :    "Catholic  Missions,"  etc. 

tKiP:     "Jesuit  Missions,"  etc. 

X  Julien  Binneteau  (Binteau)  was  born  at  La  Fleche,  France,  on 
March  13,  1653;  was  a  Jesuit  novitiate  at  Paris,  1676;  instructor  at 
Rouen,  Nevers,  Amiens,  Caen ;  went  to  Canada  in  1691 ;  and  was  sent 
to  Kaskaskia  in  1696.  He  remained  in  the  Illinois  until  his  death  on 
Dec.  24,  1699.  Father  Binneteau  was  a  victim  of  the  migratory  habits 
of  the  Indians  whom  he  followed  during  the  hunting  seasons — the 
spring  hunt  of  not  to  exceed  three  weeks;  that  of  the  winter,  which 
lasted  four  to  five  months.  Father  Marest  wrote  to  Father  Germon, 
Nov.  9,  1712 : — "He  accompanied  the  savages  in  the  greatest  heat  of 
July;  sometimes  he  was  in  danger  of  smothering  amid  the  grass  which 
wa9  extremely  high;  sometimes  he  suffered  cruelly  from  thirst,  not 
finding  in  the  dried-up  prairies  a  single  drop  of  water  to  allay  it.  t  By 
day  he  was  drenched  with  perspiration,  and  at  night  he  was  obliged 
to  sleep  on  the  ground,  exposed  to  the  dew  and  to  many  other  in- 
conveniences, concerning  which  I  will  not  go  into  detail.  These  hard- 
ships brought  upon  him  a  violent  sickness,  from  which  he  expired  in 
my  arms." — Thwaites  :  "Jesuit  Relations,"  Vols.  65  and  66. 


The  Mission  143 

among  the  Illinois  in  the  great  town  on  the  Illi- 
nois, "my  former  residence,"  for  some  time,  or 
until  their  deaths,  after  which  he  remained  in  sole 
charge  of  the  Kaskaskia  mission  on  the  Illinois  un- 
til the  coming  to  Kaskaskia  [on  the  Mississippi] 
of  Father  Mermet. 

About  1700  Father  Gravier  made  a  voyage  down 
the  Mississippi  from  Mackinac  via  the  Illinois. 
This  voyage,  as  we  saw  in  the  previous  chapter, 
was  rather  a  political  than  a  missionary  jour- 
ney; but  he  waited  at  Biloxi  for  supplies  from 
France  for  the  missions  on  the  Illinois,  with  which 
he  returned  to  the  Peorias,  among  whom  he  re- 
newed his  work. 

On  one  occasion  when  the  Indians  were  incited 
to  a  mutiny,  the  Father  was  dangerously  wounded 
and  narrowly  escaped  with  his  life.  The  account 
of  this  attack  on  Father  Gravier  is  told  by  Father 
Mermet  in  a  letter*  to  the  Jesuits  in  Canada,  un- 
der date  March  2,  1706.  It  seems  that  the  Peoria 
chiefs  had  agreed  to  send  one  of  their  number  to 
Canada  to  the  governor  to  account  for  the  death 
of  a  soldier  who  had  been  killed  by  the  Illinois; 
but  when  at  Mackinac,  while  intending  to  go  on 
with  M.  Desliettes  (a  relative  of  Henry  de  Tonty, 
whose  family  name  was  Desliettes,  or  Delietto), 
the  chief  and  his  companions  learned  that  those 

Thwaites  :  "Jesuit  Relations/'  Vols.  64  and  65. 


*Thw 


144  Starved  Rock 

who  went  down  to  Montreal  on  such  mission  were 
frequently  tortured  at  the  stake,  he  resolved  to 
turn  back ;  and  being  further  told  by  other  Indians 
that  in  order  to  avoid  the  consequences  of  his  ac- 
tion he  must  do  something  to  make  himself  feared 
by  the  French,  he  secretly  followed  Father  Gravier 
from  Mackinac  to  the  Peoria  village  and  there 
stirred  up  a  mutiny  against  him,  in  which  Father 
Gravier  was  wounded.  Two  arrows  struck  him  in 
the  breast,  a  third  tore  his  ear,  a  fourth  struck  his 
collar  bone,  while  the  fifth  pierced  the  arm  above 
the  wrist  and  penetrated  to  below  the  elbow.  This 
was  the  mortal  shot.  The  arrow  was  drawn  out, 
but  the  head  remained  in  the  wound.  A  good  Sa- 
maritan Indian  and  the  squaws  did  what  they 
could  for  him ;  and  he  eventually  reached  the  Mis- 
sissippi at  Kaskaskia  (Rouensac  of  the  "Rela- 
tion"), where  the  missionaries  tried  to  cure  him 
and  afterwards  sent  him  to  Mobile  for  treatment ; 
thence  late  in  1706  he  went  to  Paris  with  the  same 
object.  In  1708  he  returned  to  America,  where  he 
soon  afterwards  died,  apparently  from  the  effects 
of  his  wound.  He  was  born  at  Moulins,  on  May 
17,  1651;  educated  at  Paris;  went  to  Canada  in 
1685 ;  and  to  Illinois  in  1688. 

In  1698  came  Father  P.  Gabriel  Marest,  under 
whose  guidance  and  direction  the  mission  was  re- 
moved to  the  Kaskaskia  of  our  time— the  first  cap- 


The  Mission  145 

ital  of  the  state  of  Illinois,  on  the  banks  of  the 
Mississippi.*  Father  Marest  is  another  noted 
churchman  of  the  West.  In  1694  he  had  accom- 
panied D  'Iberville 's  expedition  to  the  Hudson 
Bay,  that  dislodged  the  English  traders  in  that 
region;  and  he  there  began  a  mission  to  the  In- 
dians, but  in  1695  when  the  forts  were  recovered 
by  the  English,  he  was  captured  and  sent  a  pris- 
oner to  Plymouth,  England,  and  later  sent  to 
France.  It  was,  therefore,  soon  after  his  release 
that  he  came  to  Illinois.  Father  Marest 's  letter, 
published  by  Kip  supra,  recounting  his  experi- 
ences in  the  Illinois,  is  a  most  interesting  and  valu- 
able document,  as  it  gives  us  many  data  concerning 
this  mission  not  found  elsewhere. 

Father  Marest  tried  to  civilize  the  Illinois  as 
well  as  Christianize  them;  and  taught  them  how 
to  cultivate  the  soil  and  to  breed  the  domestic  ani- 
mals ;  and  under  his  instruction  and  influence,  the 
Illinois  became  the  most  peaceful  and  industrious 
of  the  western  tribes.  The  town  at  this  time  had 
about  twenty-two  hundred  people,  said  by  the 
Father's  biographer  to  have  been  all  Christians 
except  about  forty  or  fifty.  It  wras  no  doubt  due 
to  him  directly  that  the  Illinois  country  later  so 


*  The  removal  of  the  mission  included  the  removal  of  the  name  of 

the   town   also,    Kaskaskia,    thus    creating   the   confusion   apparent  in 

many   minds,    who   have   thought   the   mission   was   always   located  at 
Kaskaskia  on  the  Mississippi. 


146  Starved  Rock 

rapidly  developed  its  agricultural  resources  that 
the  new  settlement  became  the  source  of  the  grain 
and  flour  consumed  by  the  French  settlements 
along  the  lower  Mississippi. 

Of  his  missionary  work  Father  Marest  himself 
says:  " Nothing  is  more  difficult  than  the  conver- 
sion of  these  savages;  it  is  a  miracle  of  the  Lord's 
mercy.  It  is  necessary  first  to  transform  them  in- 
to men;  and  afterwards  to  labor  to  make  them 
Christians."  The  task  was  so  nearly  impossible 
that  he  says:  "We  cannot  attribute  the  conver- 
sions either  to  the  forcible  arguments  of  the  mis- 
sionary, or  to  his  eloquence,  or  to  his  other  talents 
which  might  be  useful  in  other  countries  but  which 
can  produce  no  impression  on  the  minds  of  our 
Indians;  we  can  render  the  glory  to  Him  alone 
who  even  of  these  stones  knows  how  to  make,  when 
it  pleases  Him,  children  unto  Abraham." 

The  removal  of  the  mission  to  Kaskaskia  on  the 
Mississippi  took  place  in  1700 ;  for  Father  Gravier, 
in  his  journal  of  the  voyage  from  Mackinac  to 
the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  in  1700,  having  left 
Chicago  on  September  8,  1700,  says  he  reached  the 
Illinois  town  (the  original  Kaskaskia)  too  late  to 
prevent  the  migration  which  was  directed  and  led 
by  Father  Marest.  He  overtook  the  people,  how- 
ever, and  marched  four  days  with  them  down  the 
Illinois;  and  on  October  9,  1700,  he  left  Father 


The  Mission  147 

Marest  sick  at  the  village  of  the  Tamaroas,  where 
a  halt  had  been  made.* 

This  migration  of  missionaries  and  Indians  was 
the  natural  result  of  the  decay  of  the  Rock's  im- 
portance as  a  commercial  point,  for  reasons  ex- 
plained in  the  previous  chapter,  and  to  a  desire  for 
a  consolidation  of  the  western,  or  Illinois,  tribes 
against  those  new  firebrands  of  the  West,  the  Foxes, 
at  some  point  as  remote  as  practicable  from  the 
war  trails  of  the  latter  in  their  wars  with  the 
French  in  the  Great  Lakes  country,  to  which  we 
shall  now  give  some  attention. 


*  Father  Gravier,  in  a  "Relation"  addressed  to  Father  de  Lamber- 
ville,  Feb'y  16,  1701,  says  of  this  migration,  that  starting  from  Chi- 
cago on  Sept.  8,  1700,  "I  arrived  too  late  among  the  Illinois  of  the 
strait  (Peorias),  of  whom  Father  Marest  has  charge,  to  prevent  the 
migration  of  the  village  of  Kaskaskia,  which  had  been  too  precipitately 
made,  in  consequence  of  uncertain  news  respecting  the  Mississippi 
settlement."  He  saw  only  a  mistake  in  the  movement,  which  would 
divide  the  tribes;  "and  may  God  grant  that  the  road  [waterway]  from 
Chikagoua  to  the  strait  [outlet  of  Peoria  lake]  be  not  closed,  and  that 
the  entire  Illinois  mission  may  not  suffer  greatly  thereby.  I  admit  to 
you,  my  Reverend  Father,  that  my  heart  is  heavy  at  seeing  my 
former  flock  thus  divided  and  scattered."  He  traveled  four  days  with 
the  Kaskaskias;  and  then  went  on  to  Father  Pinet  at  the  Tamaroa 
mission.  The  Kaskaskias  had  intended  to  go  to  Louisiana,  near 
D'Iberville's  new  settlement;  but  Father  Gravier  induced  them  to  stop 
when  they  reached  the  Mississippi,  at  the  late  modern  village  of 
Kaskaskia  (which  has  wholly  disappeared  in  the  river).  This  vil- 
lage the  Indians  called  Rouensac,  in  honor  of  their  Chief  Rouensa; 
but  the  mission  perpetuated  its  ancient  name,  given  it  by  Marquette. 
When  a  French  trading  post  was  established  there,  the  nucleus  of 
the  permanent  village  was  made,  the  traders  and  voyageurs  taking 
Indian  wives.  (See  Thwaites  :  "Jesuit  Relations,"  Vol.  65.)  Father 
Marest  died  on  the  Mississippi,  on  Sept.  15,  1714. 


Starved  Rock  Looking  West  From  Lover's  Leap. 


THE  DRAMA  OF  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

God  said,  I  am  tired  of  kings, 
I  suffer  them  no  more; 

-Is  *t*  *£  *t* 

My  angel, — his  name  is  Freedom, — 
Choose  him  to  be  your  King; 
He  shall  cut  pathways  east  and  west, 
And  fend  you  with  his  wing. 

— Emerson. 

THE  POLITICAL  PROBLEM  OF  THE  FRENCH. 

We  come  now  to  the  part  played  by  Starved 
Rock  in  the  momentous  drama  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  when  the  great  struggle  took  place  be- 
tween freedom  and  absolutism  for  the  possession 
of  the  fairest  and  richest  part  of  the  North  Amer- 
ican continent.  When  the  century  opened,  the 
French  empire  in  America  was  at  the  flood  tide  of 
its  prosperity.  The  triple  alliance  of  priest,  soldier 
and  trader  had  with  unerring  instinct  and  judg- 
ment taken  possession  of  every  route  to  the  interior 
of  the  continent,  and  had  so  united  the  native  tribes 
in  the  French  interest  that  Canada  and  her  west- 
ern frontier  were  deemed  so  secure  that,  as  we  have 
seen,  most  of  the  distant  garrisons  were  withdrawn 
as  unnecessary  to  the  preservation  of  colonial  au- 
tonomy.*    In  the  far   South,  though  La  Salle's 


*  Parkman  :  "A  Half  Century  of  Conflict." 

149 


150  Starved  Rock 

schemes  had  come  to  naught,  they  had  been  re- 
vived seven  years  after  his  death  by  Tonty,  who 
had  successfully  "urged  the  seizure  of  Louisiana 
for  three  reasons :  firstly,  as  a  base  of  attack  upon 
Mexico ;  secondly,  as  a  depot  for  the  furs  and  lead 
ores  of  the  interior ;  and,  thirdly,  as  the  only  means 
of  preventing  the  English  from  becoming  masters 
of  the  West."* 

More  successful  than  La  Salle,  I)  'Iberville, 
though  he  built  his  fort  at  Biloxi  [Mississippi]  and 
not  on  the  river,  had  actually  taken  possession  of 
the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi,  thus  outwitting  the 
English,  who  were  in  fact  on  the  point  of  seizing 
the  river,  and  retarding  for  more  than  a  hundred 
years  the  development  of  Louisiana  on  lines  of 
English  freedom.  New  France  had,  therefore,  two 
heads:  one  looking  to  the  Gulf  of  St.  Lawrence, 
the  other  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico ;  and  if  the  northern 
wing  of  the  colony  had  its  hardly  concealed  jeal- 
ousy of  the  southern,  it  nevertheless  appreciated 
the  value  of  the  latter  as  an  aid  to  stem  the  incom- 
ing tide  of  English  influence  in  the  north. 

One  strategic  mistake  only  had  the  builders  of 


*  Although  there  were  atempts  by  Gov.  Berkeley  of  Virginia  as 
early  as  1650  to  cross  the  Alleghenies,  and  Col.  Abraham  Wood,  a 
Virginian,  in  1654-64  followed  streams  that  found  their  outlet  in  the 
Ohio  and  Mississippi,  anticipating  Jolliet  and  Marquette  in  the  valley 
by  ten  to  twenty  years,  nevertheless  up  to  nearly  the  end  of  that  cen- 
tury the  colonial  enterprises  in  the  West  were  few  and  far  between; 
and  New  France  had  had  ample  time  to  make  good  her  control  of  the 
interior. 


Drama  of  the  Eighteenth  Century         151 

the  Franco-American  empire  made,  but  it  was  vital 
—irremediable:  they  had  neglected  the  Mohawk 
and  Hudson  Rivers  of  New  York,  wThich  were  oc- 
cupied by  the  Dutch,  who  were  even  shrewder  trad- 
ers than  the  French  and  more  far-seeing.  Up  to 
about  this  time,  too,  the  English  had  been  content  to 
occupy  as  agriculturists  a  narrow  strip  along  the 
Atlantic  coast,  where  they  busied  themselves,  and, 
fortunately  for  future  generations  in  America, 
worried  themselves,  too,  and  their  governors,  with 
questions  of  political  and  religious  rights  and 
privileges,  rather  than  with  what  the  continent  con- 
tained behind  the  Appalachian  wall  which  few  of 
them  cared  to  penetrate  or  to  cross.  The  Hudson 
and  the  Mohawk  Rivers  however  pierced  that  wall ; 
and  when  the  Dutch  possessions  in  New  York  came 
into  the  hands  of  the  English,  the  character  of  the 
Albany  colony  did  not  wholly  change,  but  the  Eng- 
lishman, coming  nearer  to  it,  began  to  appreciate 
the  possibilities  of  the  vast  interior  for  trade  from 
Albany;  for  even  then  the  Englishman  was  quite 
as  accomplished  a  trader  as  the  Dutchman. 

For  twenty-five  years  the  English  traders  had 
been  established  on  Hudson  Bay,  diverting  the 
northern  trade  of  New  France  from  the  St.  Law- 
rence. If  now  the  English  should  also  get  a  foot- 
hold on  the  Great  Lakes  and  in  the  famous  beaver 
country  of  the  present  Michigan  peninsula,  and 


152  Starved  Rock 

cross  the  mountain  wall  into  the  Ohio  country  and 
reach  the  Mississippi  in  that  direction,  the  north- 
ern wing  of  New  Prance  would  be  hemmed  within 
very  narrow  limits  indeed,  and  her  trade  ruined 
by  the  cheaper  and  better  goods  of  the  Yankees.* 

The  cession  to  the  English  by  the  Iroquois  in 
1701  of  all  their  claims  to  the  country  formerly  oc- 
cupied by  the  Hurons  precipitated  the  struggle 
which  the  shrewd  Count  Frontenac  had  long  fore- 
seen, but  which  the  politico-clerical  influence  with 
his  successors  and  the  proverbial  corruption  of  the 
court  at  Quebec  had  left  the  colony  more  or  less  un- 
prepared to  meet.  These  Iroquois  lands  were 
bounded  by  the  Lakes  Ontario,  Huron  and  Erie, 
and  "  contained  in  length  about  800  miles  and  in 
breadth  400  miles,  including  the  country  where 
beavers  and  all  sorts  of  wild  game  keep."t  They 
pierced  the  very  heart  of  New  France. 

The  problem,  then,  that  confronted  the  French 
authorities  at  Quebec  was  how  to  stem  this  un- 
propitious  tide.  The  building  of  a  fort  at  the  foot 
of  Huron  by  Du  Lhut  in  1686  was  a  begnning  of  a 
defense,  which  was  followed  by  another  at  Detroit 
in  1701  by  La  Mothe  Cadillac,  closing  the  St.  Clair 
River  to  the  English.  Another  step  in  the  same 
direction  brings  us  back  again  to  Starved  Rock 
and  the  Illinois. 


*  Even  the  coureurs  and  voyageurs  from  Mackinac  and  the  Sault 
carried  on  a  surreptitious  trade  with  the  Albany  English  to  obtain 
the  latter's  low-priced  goods. 

f  Hinsdale:    "The  Old  Northwest." 


STARVED  ROCK  IN  THE  EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

Freedom  all  winged  expands, 

Nor  perches  in  a  narrow  place ; 

Her  broad  van  seeks  implanted  lands. 

— Emerson. 

THE  INDIAN  SIEGES. 

Wherever  the  French  came  in  contact  with  them, 
their  relations  with  the  Indians  were  for  the  most 
part  singularly  felicitous.*  This  fact  may  find 
explanation,  aside  from  the  natural  adaptability  of 
the  French  and  a  tendency  of  the  woodsmen  to 
coalesce  with  the  Indians,  in  the  circumstance  that 
they  made  no  effort  to  dispossess  the  Indians  of 


*  There  were  two  exceptions :  the  Foxes,  whose  fortunes  we  are 
about  to  follow,  and  the  Iroquois — both  hated  the  French.  The  un- 
relenting enmity  of  the  Iroquois  is  attributed  to  the  unwise  killing 
by  Champlain,  on  July  30,  1609,  near  Ticonderoga,  of  two  Mohawk 
chiefs,  in  a  foray  from  Quebec  with  two  other  Frenchmen  and  a 
war  party  of  Hurons  and  Algonquins.  The  story  has  been  frequently 
told;  but  the  effect  has  recentfy  been  epitomized  by  Harvey  in  "Cham- 
plain  as  a  Herald  of  Washington"  (Atlantic  Monthly,  July,  1909)  as 
follows :  "The  fight  was  notable  only  because  it  was  the  first  fight 
on  the  Atlantic  coast  of  North  America  in  which  white  men  appeared 
as  allies  of  any  of  the  Indians,  and  the  first,  on  the  northern  half  of 
the  coast,  in  which  firearms  figured ;  and  because  it  started  the  blood 
feud  between  the  Iroquois  confederation  and  the  French  owners  of 
Canada,  which  lasted  until  Champlain's  countrymen,  more  than  a 
century  and  a  half  later,  were  driven  off  the  continent."  And  be- 
cause, as  we  may  add,  it  placed  the  Five  Nations  on  the  side  of  the 
Dutch  and  English  in  the  future  struggle,  and  erected  a  wall  between 
France  and  the  more  southern  colonies. 

153 


154  Starved  Rock 

their  lands  or  hunting  grounds.  It  was  agreed, 
at  least  tacitly,  that  the  savages  should  be  left  in 
undisturbed  possession  of  the  whole  of  the  vast 
domain  of  the  West  on  condition  that  they  allowed 
the  French  to  control  or  monopolize  its  trade.  Be- 
sides, the  coureurs  des  hois,  who  made  New  Prance 
and  built  the  chain  of  forts  which  bound  the  West 
to  Canada,  though  proud  of  their  French  blood  and 
language,  were  in  the  bush  quite  as  much  Indian 
as  French,  and  thus  they  had  immense  influence 
over  the  savages.  Above  all,  the  coureurs  hated  the 
English;  and  being  the  shrewdest  of  diplomats 
they  won  over  the  Indians  to  themselves,  and  both 
patrolled  the  forests  and  lakes  as  against  the  ven- 
turesome Englishmen.  Even  the  Iroquois  had  be- 
come neutral  for  the  time,  and  the  destiny  of  Amer- 
ica seemed  already  decided;  for  "the  lilies  of 
France  floated  without  opposition  over  the  entire 
expanse  from  Quebec  to  the  mouth  of  the  Missis- 
sippi, and  from  the  Alleghenies  to  the  base  of  the 
Rocky  Mountains."* 

But  the  curse  of  Canada  was  the  monopoly  held 
by  the  one  trading  company  which  had  legal  con- 
trol of  all  the  commerce  of  the  colony,  and  whose 
goods  were  not  only  poorer  but  were  extortionately 
high  as  compared  with  those  of  the  English.  The 
Indians  were  not  slow  to  discover  this  difference, 


*Hebberd:  "Wisconsin  under  the  Dominion  of  France." 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  155 

and  they  began  to  chafe  under  the  French  trading 
yoke.  This  was  especially  true  of  the  Poxes  of 
Wisconsin,  a  nation  whose  renown  for  bravery,  in- 
dependence, intractability  and  endurance  was  then 
second  to  that  of  no  tribe  of  the  West. 

There  was,  however,  another  reason  for  Fox 
hatred  of  the  French  than  merely  commercial  dis- 
satisfaction. The  first  white  man  they  knew  was 
Nicolas  Perrot,  an  able  and  tactful  man  by  whom 
they  were  favorably  impressed ;  but  after  him  other 
Frenchmen  went  among  them,  who  outraged  the 
Foxes  by  their  shocking  conduct  and  their  offen- 
sive personal  bearing.  This  feeling  of  hostility 
reached  a  climax  when  some  Foxes  who  had  made 
the  great  voyage  to  Montreal  were  there  maltreated 
by  French  soldiers.  The  Foxes  were  a  proud  race ; 
and  this  ignominy  so  determined  them  on  revenge 
that  not  a  trader  or  traveller  thereafter  dared  to 
venture  into  their  vicinity.  The  affair,  in  fact,  was 
quite  as  disastrous  to  the  French  in  the  West  as 
Champlain's  ill-timed  attack  on  the  Mohawks  in 
1609  had  been  to  them  in  the  east. 

This  hostility  of  the  Foxes  continued  for  the  en- 
tire period  of  their  contact  with  the  French;  and 
ultimately  it  was  extended  to  their  Indian  allies 
also,  as  the  French  came  to  be  more  and  more  in 
touch  with  the  tribes  of  the  West.  La  Salle  did  not 
come  into  contact  with  the  Foxes  when  forming  his 


156  Starved  Rock 

confederacy  of  defense  against  the  Iroquois,  nor 
did  they  annoy  him  or  his  allies  until  after  1700 ; 
but  for  thirty  years  or  more  they  kept  the  tribes  in 
Wisconsin  and  the  West  generally  in  continual  dis- 
order. During  all  of  Frontenae's  second  admin- 
istration the  Foxes  were  in  secret  or  open  rebellion, 
which  he  was  able  neither  to  punish  nor  suppress. 
A  sort  of  universal  peace  was  patched  up  among 
the  tribes  by  his  successor,  Hector  de  Callieres,  in 
1701,  in  which  the  Foxes  took  part  to  the  extent 
that  their  spokesman  at  the  treaty-making  wound 
up  his  speech  by  saying:  "I  now  regard  the  Iro- 
quois as  my  brother;  but  I  am  at  war  with  the 
Sioux "  (quasi-friends  of  the  French  in  the  far 
west). 

There  was  quiet  for  the  time  in  the  east ;  but  the 
Upper  Country  was  no  safer  than  before.  As  early 
as  1699  the  Fox- Wisconsin  waterway  had  been 
closed  to  all  travelers.  Father  St.  Cosme  that  year 
reports  that  he  found  it  necessary  to  go  to  the  Mis- 
sissippi via  the  Chicago  portage  because  "the 
Foxes  who  are  on  this  little  [Fox]  river  that  you 
ascend  on  leaving  the  Bay  to  reach  the  Weskonsin 
will  not  suffer  any  person  to  pass  for  fear  they  will 
go  to  places  at  war  with  them,  and  hence  have  al- 
ready plundered  several  Frenchmen  who  wished 
to  go  by  that  road." 

It  was  no  better  after  the  peace.    In  1702  a  Mon- 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  157 

treal  merchant  going  to  the  Sioux  country  was 
plundered  of  goods  worth  25,000  to  30,000  francs ; 
Juchereau  de  St.  Denis  from  Mackinac  had  to 
bribe  them  to  let  his  canoes  pass ;  and  a  French  gar- 
rison of  a  fort  in  the  Sioux  country  was  dispersed, 
some  of  the  men  being  killed.  It  is  not  surprising 
then  that  men  of  Cadillac's  and  DuLhut's  type 
complained  of  the  too  hasty  evacuation  of  the  forts 
a  few  years  before— a  policy  of  non-interference 
which  Cadillac  said  exposed  Frenchmen  "to  hu- 
miliations and  insults  which  they  have  so  often  en- 
dured without  being  able  to  help  it,  such  as  being 
plundered  and  cruelly  beaten,  which  has  disgraced 
the  name  of  France  among  these  tribes." 

This  daring  misbehavior  of  the  Foxes  so  exas- 
perated the  French  that  annihilation  came  to  be 
the  policy  of  the  government;  and  it  was  under- 
stood among  the  Indian  allies  of  the  French  that 
the  governor,  Marquis  de  Vaudreuil,  desired  the 
utter  extermination  of  the  Fox  nation.*  The  first 
step  thereto  was  the  granting  of  permission  to 
Cadillac  to  found  a  colony  at  Detroit,  as  a  substi- 
tute for  Du  Lhut's  fort  at  St.  Joseph  on  Lake  Hu- 
ron, closed  by  the  order  of  1699 ;  and  to  this  new 
post,  by  some  rare  and  inexplicable  chance,  a  large 
body  of  Foxes  migrated,  the  Detroit  fort  being  sur- 
rounded by  cantons  of  Indians  as  was  La  Salle's 


*Hebberd:     "Wisconsin,"  etc. 


158  Starved  Rock 

Fort  St.  Louis  on  the  Illinois.  But  there  was  at 
Detroit  no  diplomat  with  La  Salle's  finesse  or 
Tonty's  skill  of  address  and  appealing  fairness  and 
generosity  to  keep  these  various  tribes  from  flying 
at  each  other's  throats;  and  soon  there  was  war 
among  the  allies,  which  Cadillac  made  no  real  pre- 
tense of  checking.  The  massacre  of  the  Poxes  at 
Detroit  in  1712  may  or  may  not  have  been  deliber- 
ately planned  by  the  French,  but  it  seems  to  have 
been  so  understood  by  the  allies,  who,  after  the 
nineteen  days'  siege  of  the  Foxes'  stockade  was 
over,  wherein  several  hundred  Foxes  were  butch- 
ered, set  out  for  Quebec  to  claim  the  reward  which 
they  insisted  the  governor  had  promised  for  the 
Foxes'  destruction.* 

The  tragedy  at  Detroit,  although  it  crippled  the 
Fox  nation,  did  not  destroy  it  nor  break  the  spirit 
of  those  indomitable  savages,  or  of  their  allies,  the 
Kickapoos  and  Mascoutins  of  Rock  River ;  it  only 
intensified  their  dislike  of  the  French  into  a  deep 
and  undying  hatred. 

After  a  short  peace,  or  truce,  during  which  they 
made  an  alliance  with  the  Sioux,  the  Foxes  in  small 
war  parties  not  only  made  life  in  the  woods  near 
Detroit  a  terror  for  the  French  and  their  allies 
alike,  but  they  began  to  harass  the  Peorias  and 
Kaskaskias  also;  so  that  by  1714  the  latter  were 


♦Pakkman:     "Half  Century  of  Conflict." 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  159 

practically  driven  away  from  their  old  homes  on 
the  Illinois  to  the  protecting  arms  of  the  French 
at  Kaskaskia  and  Fort  Chartres  on  the  Mississippi, 
only  the  Peorias  remaining  at  their  ancient  seat 
on  Illinois  River.  Thus  the  Foxes,  with  their  settle- 
ment on  Fox  Eiver  of  Wisconsin  and  by  their  dis- 
persion of  the  Illinois  from  their  old  homes,  had 
become  virtual  masters  of  both  lines  of  travel  be- 
tween the  east  and  the  west,  and  communication 
between  Canada  and  Louisiana  became  exceeding- 
ly difficult  and  dangerous.  In  fact,  they  had  prac- 
tically split  the  empire  of  New  France  asunder, 
and  trade  was  ruined ;  for  the  east  was  never  rich 
in  furs,  and  fur-bearing  animals  rapidly  disap- 
peared when  civilization  came  to  the  country.  At 
the  same  time,  the  Iroquois  had  always  placed  a 
barrier  in  the  way  to  the  Ohio  basin,  that  prevented 
the  French  from  access  to  Louisiana  by  that  de- 
sirable route. 

The  situation  had  become  desperate  therefore; 
and  in  1716  De  Louvigny  was  sent  with  eight  hun- 
dred French  and  Indian  allies  to  crush  the  Foxes 
at  their  Wisconsin  villages.  The  latter  were  badly 
punished  and  gave  hostages  to  preserve  peace,  and 
even  made  a  pretense  of  keeping  it;  nevertheless 
they  prepared  for  the  future.  A  Fox  orator  visited 
all  the  tribes  who  knew  the  French,  and  endeavored 
to  rouse  them  to  action  against  the  whites,  going 


160  Starved  Rock 

as  far  south  as  the  Chickasaws.  Such  a  confed- 
eration was  not  consummated ;  but  when  in  1718  it 
appeared  that  but  one  of  the  Fox  hostages  re- 
mained alive  and  that  he  had  been  mutilated  by 
the  loss  of  an  eye  by  his  hosts'  abuse,  the  Foxes 
again  became  restless  and  began  anew  to  harass 
the  Illinois,  "the  devoted  henchmen  of  their 
French  masters."*  Taking  advantage  of  the  visi- 
ble rivalry  between  Canada  and  Louisiana  and  the 
indifference  of  Canadians  to  their  countrymen's 
troubles  in  the  West,t  the  Foxes  and  their  allies 
struck  the  Illinois  with  impunity,  driving  them  to 
very  gates  of  Fort  Chartres. 

Again  in  1722  another  crisis  came.  The  Illinois 
captured  the  nephew  of  Oushala  (or  Ouachala), 
the  principal  Fox  war  chief,  and  burned  him  alive. 
A  fury  of  revenge  seized  the  Fox  nation.  A  large 
war  party  was  immediately  formed  of  Foxes  with 
their  allies,  the  Mascoutins,  Kickapoos,  Winne- 
bagoes,  Sauks,  Sioux,  and  Abenakis,  who  advanced 
into  the  Illinois  country  and  attacked  them,  driv- 
ing the  Illinois  to  the  top  of  Starved  Rock  for 
refuge,  and  held  them  there  at  mercy.  This  Illi- 
nois tribe  was  the  Peorias,  whose  home  was  on 
Peoria  Lake,  the  last  of  the  tribes  to  cling  to  the 
neighborhood   of  this   famous   stronghold  of   La 


*  Parkman  :     "Half  Century  of  Conflict." 

fThe  government  of  Louisiana  had  been  transferred  from  Canada 
to  Paris  in  1701. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  161 

Salle,  all  the  other  tribes  having  fled  to  the  south- 
west. "  Unluckily  we  know  nothing  of  the  details 
of  the  siege,  except  the  number  of  the  slain :  twen- 
ty Peorias  and  one  hundred  and  twenty  of  the  be- 
siegers," says  Hebberd.  "But  the  bare  figures  are 
eloquent;  they  tell  not  of  a  mere  blockade,  but  of 
fierce  assaults,  storming  parties,  desperate  at- 
tempts to  scale  the  heights— the  old  story  of  Foxes' 
fury  and  reckless  courage." 

The  Foxes  for  some  unexplained  reason  raised 
the  siege,  thus  sparing  the  Peorias'  lives,  for  which 
subsequently  they  desired  praise  of  the  French. 
Charlevoix*  says  the  Foxes  were  defeated ;  but  the 
result  of  the  Fox  campaign  was  the  abandonment 
of  their  country  by  the  Peorias  (who  retired,  for 
a  time  at  least,  to  their  kindred  tribes  on  the  Mis- 
sissippi), and  "the  domination  by  the  Renards  of 
the  second  great  waterway  (the  Desplaines-Illi- 
nois  River)  between  Canada  and  Louisiana,  "t  the 
very  heart  of  New  France.  J  News  of  this  attack 
on  the  Peorias  having  reached  Fort  Chartres,  a  de- 
tachment of  a  hundred  men,  commanded  by  Cheval- 
ier d'Artaguiette  and  Sieur  de  Tisne,  was  sent  to 
their  assistance,  but  before  this  reinforcement 
reached  the  Rock,  the  Foxes  raised  the  siege  and 
departed. 


*  Charlevoix  :     "History  of   New  France." 

t  Kellogg  :     "The  Fox  Indians  During  the  French  Regime." 

X  Beckwith  :    "The  Illinois  and  Indiana  Indians." 


162  Starved  Rock 

The  affair  "was  a  grave  disaster  for  the 
French,"  Charlevoix  says;  "for  now  that  there  is 
nothing  to  check  the  raids  of  the  Foxes,  communi- 
cation between  Canada  and  Louisiana  became  less 
practicable."  At  Versailles  this  offense  of  the 
Foxes  seemed  unpardonable,  and  the  colonial  min- 
ister declared  that,  "The  Outagamies  [Foxes] 
must  be  effectually  put  down,  and  that  his  Majes- 
ty will  reward  the  officer  who  will  reduce,  or, 
rather,  destroy  them."* 

Nevertheless  the  destruction  of  the  Foxes  pro- 
ceeded but  slowly.  Their  Indian  allies  were  faint- 
hearted and  the  French  officers  were  scarcely  less 
reluctant  to  attack  the  Foxes.  This  unwillingness 
to  act  provoked  from  Paris  a  sharp  rebuke  of  the 
governor,  because,  the  minister  said,  he  had  learned 
that  the  commandants  at  Detroit  and  Mackinac 
and  other  places  had  prevented  raids  on  the 
Foxes. f  The  Illinois  country  suffered  severely; 
the  settlements  were  all  but  ruined ;  but  as  long  as 
the  Illinois  alone  suffered,  the  Canadians  took  but 
little  interest;  as  was  seen  when  Lignery  went  to 
Green  Bay  and  concluded  a  peace  between  the 
Foxes  and  their  allies  and  the  Saulteur  and  Ot- 
tawas,  without  including  the  Illinois ;  for  which  he 
was  sharply  rebuked  by  the  court:    "It  looks  as 


*  Parkman  :     "Half  Century  of  Conflict." 

f  Kellogg  :    "The  Fox  Indians  During  the  French  Regime,"  in  Pro- 
ceedings Wis.  Hist.  Society,  1907. 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  163 

if  he  tried  to  ruin  the  fur  trade  from  Louisiana." 
In  1726  Lignery  made  another  paper  peace 
which  did  not  include  the  Illinois ;  but  quiet  did  not 
come  with  his  treaty;  so  that  in  1728  he  started 
once  more  to  punish  the  Poxes.  He  took  from 
Quebec  some  five  hundred  Frenchmen,  to  whom 
were  added  a  thousand  Indians,  intending  to  de- 
stroy the  Foxes  at  their  Wisconsin  villages;  and 
in  August  they  burned  the  cabins  and  destroyed  the 
crops,  but  his  nimble  enemies  escaped  him.  How- 
ever, the  effect  upon  the  Foxes  was  severe,  as  the 
affair  cost  them  the  loss  of  valuable  allies. 

There  were  still  other  attempts  to  crush  the 
Foxes,  but  without  effect,  until  in  1730,  Coulon  de 
Villiers,  who  in  1754  defeated  George  Washington 
at  Fort  Necessity,  appeared  at  Quebec  with  the 
news  that  his  father,  commander  of  La  Salle's  old 
Fort  Miami  on  St.  Joseph  River,  had  struck  the 
Foxes  a  telling,  if  not  crushing,  blow,  by  killing  two 
hundred  of  their  warriors  and  six  hundred  of  the 
women  and  children,  operating  with  a  force  of 
one  hundred  and  seventy  Frenchmen  who  had  been 
gathered  from  various  western  posts  and  were  as- 
sisted by  twelve  to  thirteen  hundred  Indian  allies, 
under  Sieurs  de  Saint- Ange,  father  and  son,  from 
the  Illinois  settlements,  and  De  Noyelles,  from 
among  the  Miamis  in  Indiana. 

"The  accounts  of  the  affair  are  obscure  and  not 


164  Starved  Bock 

very  trustworthy, ' '  says  Parkman.  ' '  It  seems  that 
the  Foxes  began  the  fray  by  an  attack  on  the  Illi- 
nois at  La  Salle's  old  station  of  LaRocher 
[Starved  Rock],  on  the  river  Illinois.  On  hearing 
of  this  the  French  commanders  mustered  their  In- 
dian allies,  hastened  to  the  spot,  and  found  the 
Foxes  intrenched  in  a  grove  which  they  had  sur- 
rounded with  a  stockade." 

Beauharnois  writing  to  the  Minister,  October  28, 
1730,  said :  "The  Renards  had  taken  some  Illinois 
prisoners  and  burned  near  the  Rock  the  son  of  the 
great  chief.  Then  the  savages  assembled.  Saint- 
Ange  was  at  the  head  of  the  French  and  three  hun- 
dred to  four  hundred  Indians,  five  hundred  men  in 
all.  The  Kickapoos,  Mascoutins  and  Illinois  of 
the  Rock  [Peorias:  fifty  fighting  men,  according 
to  a  census  of  1736]  had  made  themselves  masters 
of  the  passes  on  the  northeast  side ;  and  this  prob- 
ably compelled  the  Renards  to  build  a  fort  at  La 
Rocher  [the  Rock],  a  league  below,  to  protect  them- 
selves against  the  attacks.  One  of  the  scouts  from 
the  fort  on  August  12  reported  one  hundred  and 
eleven  cabins;  and  on  the  17th  the  army  arrived 
at  the  Rock." 

Kellogg,  on  the  other  hand,  says  that  the  Foxes 
had  accepted  a  secret  offer  of  an  asylum  among 
the  Iroquois  and  were  on  the  march  eastward  and 
that  when  Dubisson  at  Mackinac  heard  of  the  mi- 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  165 

gration,  being  informed  of  it  by  certain  Kickapoos 
and  Mascoutins  who  had  abandoned  the  Fox  alli- 
ance, he  summoned  aid  from  Fort  Chartres,  Fori 
St.  Joseph  and  Fort  Miami,  whose  commanders 
brought  their  Indian  allies. 

The  Foxes  on  finding  themselves  pursued  in  such 
force  built  a  fort  on  the  prairie  "  sixty  leagues 
south  of  the  end  of  Lake  Michigan"*  and  between 
the  Rock  and  Ouiantenon  (a  fort  near  the  site  of 
the  present  city  of  Lafayette,  Indiana),  and  there 
defended  themselves  in  a  siege  lasting  twenty- 
three  days. 

"The  Foxes,"  says  Ferland,t  "had  chosen  an 
admirable  position  near,  or  in,  a  piece  of  woods 
upon  a  slope  by  the  side  of  a  small  river.  Although 
outnumbered  four  to  one,  they  fought  with  their 
usual  dash  and  valor,  making  desperate  sorties,  but 


*  There  is  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  location  of  this 
battle,  and  exactness  will  not  be  possible.  Hocquart,  the  intendant  of 
Canada  at  the  time,  informed  the  court  that  the  Fox  fort  was  "in  a 
plain  between  the  River  Wabache  and  the  River  of  the  Illinois,  about 
sixty  leagues  [?]  to  the  south  of  the  extremity  of  Lake  Michigan 
and  to  the  east  of  the  Rock  in  the  Illinois  country."  J.  F.  Steward 
("Lost  Maramech  and  Earliest  Chicago")  locates  the  scene  of  this 
struggle  on  Fox  River  near  Piano,  111.,  where  he  has  marked  the  sup- 
posed spot  with  a  great  boulder;  but  we  must  confess  his  proofs  of 
locality  are  not  entirely  convincing.  (See  also  Mr.  Steward's  paper, 
"Conflicting  Accounts  Found  in  Early  Illinois  History,"  in  Transactions 
of  111.  Hist.  Society  for  1908.)  Walter  B.  Douglas,  in  "The  Sieurs  de 
Saint-Ange"  (Trans.  111.  Hist.  Society,  1909),  says  this  fight  took  place 
in  what  is  now  La  Salle  county  and  that  the  "small  river"  was  the 
present  Covel  Creek.  This  is  the  most  likely  supposition  proposed, 
in  view  of  the  relative  nearness  to  the  Rock  to  Covel  Creek  at  any 
point  of  its  course,  only  a  few  miles  eastward  at  the  most. 

fFerland:    "Cours  d'Histoire  du  Canada." 


166  Starved  Rock 

were  each  time  driven  back  by  the  overwhelming- 
numbers  of  the  enemy.  The  French,  on  their  part, 
dug  trenches  and  proceeded  with  all  the  caution 
they  had  been  taught  by  many  campaigns  against 
these  redoubtable  foes. 

"  After  a  while  the  supply  of  food  gave  out,  and 
famine  reigned  in  both  camps.  The  Foxes  and  the 
French  suffered  alike  under  the  calm,  cruel  im- 
partiality of  nature.  Two  hundred  Illinois  In- 
dians deserted.  But  the  French  persevered,  and 
began  the  construction  of  a  fort  to  prevent  the  be- 
sieged from  going  to  the  river  for  water.  Further 
resistance  now  seemed  impossible.  But  on  the 
8th  of  September  a  violent  storm  arose,  accom- 
panied by  heavy  thunder  and  torrents  of  rain.  The 
following  night  was  rainy,  dark  and  cold ;  and  un- 
der its  cover  the  Foxes  stole  away  from  their  fort. 
Before  they  had  gone  far  the  crying  of  their  chil- 
dren betrayed  them.  But  the  French  did  not  dare 
to  attack  them  amidst  a  darkness  so  dense  that  it 
was  impossible  to  distinguish  friend  from  foe.  In 
the  morning,  however,  they  set  out  in  hot  pursuit/' 

The  pursuit  became  a  mere  massacre  (the  Foxes 
being  then  without  ammunition),  from  which  only 
fifty  or  sixty  of  the  Foxes  escaped.  Many  of  the 
prisoners  were  burned  at  the  stake.  De  Villiers 
sent  his  son  Coulon  as  a  special  messenger  to 
Quebec  with  the  news,  in  earnest  of  which  the  latter 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  167 

took  with  him  a  wretched  Fox  prisoner.  The  gov- 
ernor in  his  report  to  Paris  says :  ' '  Tranquility, 
for  so  many  years  disturbed  in  the  Upper  Coun- 
try, will  now  reign ;"  and  closes  with  the  cheering 
news :  • i  Behold  a  nation  humiliated  in  such  a  fash- 
ion that  they  will  nevermore  trouble  the  earth." 

In  truth  "the  offending  tribe  must  now,  one 
would  think,  have  ceased  to  be  dangerous,''  but 
nothing  less  than  its  total  destruction  would  con- 
tent the  French.  The  latter,  however,  themselves 
never  afterwards  sent  an  expedition  against  the 
Foxes,  but  turned  their  punishment  over  to  their 
Indian  allies  whom  their  officers  led  in  repeated 
raids  upon  their  unfortunate  victims.  But  even 
this  ceaseless  vengeance  failed  to  annihilate  these 
splendid  savages,  the  remnants  of  whom  found  a 
refuge  with  the  Sauks ;  and  when,  a  year  later,  De 
Villiers,  then  on  Green  Bay,  went  to  a  Sauk  village 
and  demanded  the  delivery  to  him  of  certain  Foxes 
secreted  there,  he  was  fiercely  attacked  and  both 
himself  and  his  younger  son  killed— the  latter  by 
the  sure  aim  of  a  Sauk  boy  of  twelve,  who  thus 
restored  order  to  a  defense  by  his  people  that  had 
become  but  a  panic.  In  the  fight  the  French  lost 
heavily;  but  the  result  of  the  affair  was  to  send 
the  Sauks  and  Foxes  across  the  Mississippi  into 
Iowa,  among  whose  tribes  they  recuperated  their 
strength  and  became  again  a  " thorn  in  the  flesh" 


168  Starved  Bock 

of  the  French  for  many  years,  and  a  menace  later 
even  to  the  American  frontier  in  1832,  when  un- 
der Black  Hawk,  the  Sauks  and  Foxes  rose  in  open 
war  against  the  United  States.  Then  they  were 
finally  subdued  for  all  time.  Their  descendants 
still  occupy  lands  in  Iowa. 

Though  they  met  the  fate  of  all  their  race, 
nevertheless  the  Foxes  unconsciously,  as  has  been 
seen,  played  an  important  part  in  shaping  the  des- 
tiny of  the  continent ;  for  it  was  no  slight  service 
to  liberty  as  opposed  to  absolutism  that  they  closed 
the  gateways  between  Canada  and  Louisiana  and 
for  thirty  years  virtually  kept  them  closed,  thus 
preventing  the  consolidation  of  the  extremes  of 
New  France ;  while  in  endeavoring  to  destroy  the 
Foxes,  the  French  but  kindled  a  mightier  confla- 
gration which  spread  over  all  the  West.  "The 
splendid  resistance  of  the  Wisconsin  savages  and 
the  revelation  of  the  wThite  man's  weakness  and 
wickedness  had  disenchanted  the  Indians.  The 
prestige  of  France  was  gone."*  One  after  another 
the  western  tribes  became  refractory  and  hostile,— 
the  Sioux  in  1736;  and  the  Chickasaws  in  the 
South;  even  the  Hurons  and  Ottawas  in  1740  be- 
came uneasy  and  impudent.  Discontent  every- 
where among  the  tribes  became  the  rule,  and  as 
year  after  year  followed  the  Canadian  governor 


*  Hebberd  :     "Wisconsin   Under  the   Dominion   of   France." 


In  the  Eighteenth  Century  169 

could  only  report  to  Paris  that  "  there  is  a  great 
change  of  feeling  among  the  Indians  of  the  West 
and  the  state  of  affairs  there  is  very  bad."  Only 
the  Illinois  continued  faithful  to  their  priests  and 
to  France. 

This  condition  of  western  hostility  continued  up 
to  the  very  opening  of  the  French  and  Indian  War, 
whose  close  saw  the  retirement  of  France  from 
Canada  and  the  West  forever.  So  that  these  long 
and  awful  wars,  as  discreditable  to  French  human- 
ity as  they  were  to  Canadian  military  acumen, 
paved  the  way  for  the  Anglo-Saxon  conquest  and 
occupation  when  the  time  was  ripe  for  that  happy 
event.  Starved  Rock  as  the  spot  where  took  place 
not  the  least  important  of  those  struggles  between 
the  French  and  their  allies  and  their  unconquera- 
ble savage  foes,  thus  became  a  by  no  means  in- 
significant part  of  the  scenery  of  that  greater  con- 
test of  races  and  ideas  which  ultimately  closed  by 
giving  "the  rivers  and  prairies  of  the  Great  West 
to  the  English-speaking  race"  and  by  "handing  the 
continent  over  to  its  rightful  inheritors,  the  free- 
men of  America." 


THE  LAST  OF  THE  ILLINOIS. 


Under  the  hollow  sky, 
Stretched  on  the  prairie  lone, 

Center  of  glory,  I, 
Bleeding,  disdain  to  groan, 

But  like  a  battle-cry 
Peal  forth  my  thunder  moan. 

Bairn — wah — wah  ! 


Hark  to  those  spirit  notes! 
Ye  high  heroes  divine, 

Hymned  from  your  god-like  throats 
That  song  of  praise  is  mine ! 

Mine,  whose  grave-pennon   floats 
O'er  the  foeman's  line. 

Bairn — wah — wah  ! 

— Death  Song* 

THE  FINAL  TRAGEDY. 

It  is  believed  that  the  tragedy  which  gave 
Starved  Rock  its  suggestive  name  was  a  part  of 
the  aftermath  of  the  wars  of  the  conspiracy  of 
Pontiac;  yet  as  there  are  no  known  cotemporary 
accounts  of  this  occurrence,  our  knowledge  of 
which  rests  largely  on  tradition,  Beckwithf  insists 
there  is  really  no  authority  at  all  to  support  it, 
other  than  the  "  vague,  though  charming,  traditions 
drawn  from  the  wonder  stories  of  many  tribes." 
Yet  no  reader  of  this  sketch  will,  I  hope,  be  will- 


*  Death   Song:     "A  be  tuh  ge  zhig."     Algonquin  by  Schoolcraft; 
English  by  C.  F.  Hoffman, 
t  Beckwith    (Hiram  W.)  :   "Illinois   and   Indiana   Indians." 

171 


172  Starved  Rock 

ing,  however  meager  Mr.  Beckwith  may  have  con- 
sidered our  authorities,  to  now  surrender,  at  his 
dictum,  so  dramatic  and  picturesque  a  tale,  hal- 
lowed as  it  is  by  the  faith  in  its  truth  of  our  pioneer 
predecessors,  who  have  woven  the  tale  into  the 
fabric  of  local  historical  tradition.  There  is  noth- 
ing in  the  least  improbable  in  the  legend;  rather, 
there  is  much  to  support  the  affirmations  of  Indian, 
French  and  American  tradition,  that  the  tragedy 
of  the  obliteration  by  starvation  here  of  a  race  of 
dusky  warriors  did  actually  take  place  as  residents 
of  the  Illinois  Valley  have  been  led  to  believe  ever 
since  the  modern  owners  of  the  lands  came  upon 
them. 

It  is  not  proposed  to  dwell  on  the  Conspiracy  of 
Pontiac.  The  student  of  American  history  and  the 
reader  of  romance  alike  will  find  the  record  in 
Parkman's  volumes  bearing  that  title :  a  broad  his- 
toric projection  for  the  student;  history  as  charm- 
ingly told  as  romance  for  the  general  reader.  Suf- 
fice it  here  to  say,  that  a  few  days  before  his  death, 
in  1769,  Pontiac  made  his  old  friend,  Pierre  Chou- 
teau, the  trader,  a  visit  at  St.  Louis;  and  while 
there  heard  of  an  Indian  drinking  bout  or  other 
festivities  about  to  be  held  at  Cahokia.  Thither, 
in  spite  of  the  warnings  of  his  host,  Pontiac  went, 
in  April,  1769,  and  while  drunk,  was,  at  the  in- 
stigation of  an  English  trader  named  Williamson, 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  173 

murdered  for  the  bribe  of  a  barrel  of  whiskey,  by 
a  Kaskaskia  Indian.* 

The  murder  set  the  whole  Illinois  country  aflame. 
*  *  The  news  spread  like  lightning  through  the  coun- 
try, ' '  says  one  account,  quoted  by  Parkman.  ' '  The 
Indians  assembled  in  great  numbers,  attacked  and 
destroyed  all  the  Peorias,  except  about  thirty  fam- 
ilies, which  were  received  into  Fort  Chartres." 
All  the  authorities  agree  that  the  murder  "  brought 
on  successive  wars,  and  the  almost  total  extermina- 
tion of  the  Illinois."  Parkman 's  own  text  says: 
"  Could  Pontiac's  shade  have  revisited  the  scene 
of  his  murder,  his  savage  spirit  would  have  exulted 
in  the  vengeance  which  overwhelmed  the  abettors 
of  the  crime.  Whole  tribes  were  rooted  out  to  ex- 
piate it.  Chiefs  and  sachems,  whose  veins  had 
thrilled  with  his  eloquence ;  young  warriors,  whose 
aspiring  hearts  had  caught  the  inspiration  of  his 
greatness,  mustered  to  revenge  his  fate ;  and  from 
the  north  and  the  east,  their  united  bands  de- 
scended on  the  villages  of  the  Illinois.  Tradition 
has  but  faintly  preserved  the  memory  of  the  event ; 
and  its  only  annalists,  men  who  held  the  intes- 
tine feuds  of  the  savage  tribes  in  no  more  account 
than  the  quarrels  of  panthers  or  wildcats,  have 


*  Parkman  :  "Conspiracy  of  Pontiac,"  Vol.  II.  In  a  note  he  says 
that  Pontiac's  body  was  claimed  by  St.-Ange,  who  buried  it  near  his 
fort  at  St.  Louis.  A  bronze  tablet  in  the  corridor  of  the  Southern 
Hotel  today  indicates  that  that  great  hostelry  has  been  erected  over  the 
grave  of  the  famous  chieftain. 


174  Starved  Rock 

left  but  a  meager  record.  Yet  enough  remains 
to  tell  us  that  over  the  grave  of  Pontiac  more  blood 
was  poured  out  in  atonement  than  flowed  from  the 
veins  of  the  slaughtered  heroes  on  the  corpse  of 
Patroclus;  and  the  remnant  of  the  Illinois  who 
survived  the  carnage  remained  forever  after  sunk 
in  utter  insignificance. ' ' 

The  specific  incident  with  which  the  name  of 
Starved  Rock  is  indissolubly  linked  is  nowhere 
mentioned  in  military  reports  of  the  time,  for  there 
was  no  contemporary  white  man's  war  in  whose  an- 
nals such  an  event  might  be  recorded ;  nor  are  the 
Pottawatomie  Indians  alone  to  be  charged  with  the 
horrors  of  the  revenge  wreaked  by  Pontiac's  In- 
dian friends.  Nevertheless,  the  Pottawatomie  In- 
dians, w7ho  had  by  this  time  come  into  possession 
of  most  of  the  lands  in  Illinois  formerly  held  by 
the  several  tribes  who  are  named  in  a  group  as  the 
Illinois,  were  on  the  ground  at  this  time,  and  with- 
out doubt  took  their  part  in  the  general  fighting. 

The  "wonder  story"  which  Mr.  Beckwith  cites  ' 
as  the  most  interesting  of  those  preserving  this  tra- 
dition is  that  published  by  the  late  Judge  John 
Dean  Caton,  in  a  pamphlet  entitled,  "The  Last  of 
the  Illinois  and  a  Sketch  of  the  Pottawatomies. " 
Judge  Caton  was  very  early  a  resident  of  Illinois 
and  of  La  Salle  county  and  knew  well  the  pioneers 
and  the  disappearing  Indians  by  personal  contact. 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  175 

In  his  sketch  he  says  that  the  wars  against  the 
Illinois  had  so  reduced  them  in  numbers  that  now, 
in  their  direst  extremity,  driven  hither  as  a  last 
refuge,  "they  found  sufficient  space  upon  the  half 
acre  of  ground  which  covers  the  summit  of  Starved 
Rock.  As  its  sides  are  perpendicular,  ten  men 
could  repel  ten  thousand  with  the  means  of  war- 
fare then  at  their  command.  The  allies  made  no 
attempt  to  take  the  fort  on  the  Rock  by  storm,  but 
closely  besieged  it  on  every  side.  On  the  north,  or 
river,  side  the  upper  rock  overhangs  the  water 
somewhat,  and  tradition  tells  us  how  the  confed- 
erates placed  themselves  in  canoes  under  the  shelv- 
ing rock  and  cut  the  thongs  of  the  besieged  when 
they  lowered  their  vessels  to  obtain  water  from  the 
river,  and  so  reduced  them  by  thirst;  but  Mea- 
chelle,*  as  far  as  I  know,  never  mentioned  this  as 
one  of  the  means  resorted  to  by  the  confederates 
to  reduce  their  enemies,  nor,  from  an  examination 
of  the  ground,  do  I  think  this  probable ;  but  they 
depended  upon  a  lack  of  provisions,  which  we  can 
readily  appreciate  must  soon  occur  to  a  savage  peo- 
ple who  rarely  anticipate  the  future  in  storing  up 
supplies.  How  long  the  besieged  held  out  Mea- 
chelle  did  not,  and  probably  could  not,  tell  us ;  but 
at  last  the  time  came  when  the  unfortunate  rem- 

■  ■  -  :  /  :■— :  "i-^r=Tfl 

*  Meachelle  was  a  Pottawatomie  chief  who  told  the  story  to  Judge 
Caton,  the  chief  being  a  boy  at  the  time  of  the  siege. 


176  Starved  Rock 

nant  could  hold  out  no  longer.  They  awaited  but 
a  favorable  opportunity  to  attempt  their  escape. 
This  was  at  last  afforded  by  a  dark  and  stormy 
night,  when,  led  by  their  few  remaining  warriors, 
all  stole  in  profound  silence  down  the  steep  and 
narrow  declivity  to  be  met  by  a  solid  wall  of  their 
enemies  surrounding  the  point  where  alone  a  sortie 
could  be  made,  and  which  had  been  confidently  ex- 
pected. The  horrid  scene  that  ensued  can  be  better 
imagined  than  described.  No  quarter  was  asked 
or  given.  For  a  time  the  howlings  of  the  tempest 
were  drowned  by  the  yells  of  the  combatants  and 
the  shrieks  of  the  victims. 

"  Desperation  lends  strength  to  even  enfeebled 
arms,  but  no  efforts  of  valor  could  resist  the  over- 
whelming numbers  actuated  by  the  direst  hate. 
The  braves  fell  one  by  one,  fighting  like  very  fiends, 
and  terribly  did  they  revenge  themselves  upon 
their  enemies.  The  few  women  and  children  whom 
famine  had  left  but  enfeebled  skeletons  fell  easy 
victims  to  the  warclubs  of  the  terrible  savages,  who 
deemed  it  as  much  a  duty,  and  almost  as  great  a 
glory,  to  slaughter  the  emaciated  women  and  the 
helpless  children  as  to  strike  down  the  men  who 
were  able  to  make  resistance  with  arms  in  their 
hands.  They  were  bent  upon  the  utter  extermina- 
tion of  their  hated  enemies,  and  most  successfully 
did  they  bend  their  savage  energies  to  the  bloody 
task. 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  111 

"Soon  the  victims  were  stretched  upon  the  slop- 
ing ground  south  and  west  of  the  impregnable 
Rock,  their  bodies  lying  stark  upon  the  sand  which 
had  been  thrown  up  by  the  prairie  winds.  The 
wails  of  the  feeble  and  the  strong  had  ceased  to  fret 
the  night  wind,  whose  mournful  sighs  through  the 
neighboring  pines  sounded  like  a  requiem.  Here 
was  enacted  the  fitting  finale  to  that  work  of  death 
which  had  been  commenced,  scarcely  a  mile  away, 
a  century  before  by  the  still  more  savage  and  ter- 
rible Iroquois. 

"Still,  all  were  not  destroyed.  Eleven  of  the 
most  athletic  warriors,  in  the  darkness  and  con- 
fusion of  the  fight,  broke  through  the  besieging 
lines.  They  had  marked  well  from  their  high  perch 
on  the  isolated  Rock  the  little  nook  below  where 
their  enemies  had  moored  at  least  a  part  of  their 
canoes,  and  to  these  they  rushed  with  headlong 
speed,  unnoticed  by  their  foes.  Into  these  they 
threw  themselves,  and  hurried  down  the  rapids  be- 
low. They  had  been  trained  to  the  use  of  the  pad- 
dle and  the  canoe,  and  knew  well  every  intricacy 
of  the  channel,  so  that  they  could  safely  thread  it, 
even  in  the  dark  and  boisterous  night.  They  knew 
their  deadly  enemies  would  soon  be  in  their  wake, 
and  that  there  was  no  safe  refuge  for  them  short 
of  St.  Louis.  They  had  no  provisions  to  sustain 
their  waning  strength,  and  yet  it  was  certain  death 


178  Starved  Rock 

to  stop  by  the  way.  Their  only  hope  was  in  press- 
ing forward  by  night  and  by  day,  without  a  mo- 
ment's pause,  scarcely  looking  back,  yet  ever  fear- 
ing that  their  pursuers  would  make  their  appear- 
ance around  the  point  they  had  last  left  behind. 
It  was  truly  a  race  for  life.  If  they  could  reach 
St.  Louis,  they  were  safe ;  if  overtaken,  there  was 
no  hope.  We  must  leave  to  the  imagination  the 
details  of  a  race  where  the  stake  was  so  momentous 
to  the  contestants.  As  life  is  sweeter  even  than  re- 
venge, we  may  safely  assume  that  the  pursued  were 
impelled  to  even  greater  exertions  than  the  pur- 
suers. Those  who  ran  for  life  won  the  race.  They 
reached  St.  Louis  before  their  enemies  came  in 
sight,  and  told  their  appalling  tale  to  the  comman- 
dant of  the  fort,  from  whom  they  received  assur- 
ances of  protection,  and  were  generously  supplied 
with  food,  which  their  famished  condition  so  much 
required.  This  had  barely  been  done  when  their 
enemies  arrived  and  fiercely  demanded  their  vic- 
tims, that  no  drop  of  blood  of  their  hated  enemies 
might  longer  circulate  in  human  veins.  This  was 
refused,  when  they  retired  with  impotent  threats 
of  future  vengeance  which  they  never  had  the 
means  of  executing. 

" After  their  enemies  had  gone,  the  Illinois,  who 
never  after  even  claimed  that  name,  thanked  their 
entertainers,  and,  full  of  sorrow  which  no  words 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  179 

can  express,  slowly  paddled  their  way  across  the 
river,  to  seek  new  friends  among  the  tribes  who 
then  occupied  the  southern  part  of  this  State,  and 
who  would  listen  with  sympathy  to  the  sad  tale  they 
had  to  relate.  They  alone  remained  the  broken 
remnant  and  last  representatives  of  their  once 
great  nation.  Their  name,  even  now,  must  be 
blotted  out  from  among  the  names  of  the  aboriginal 
tribes.  Henceforth  they  must  cease  to  be  of  the 
present,  and  could  only  be  remembered  as  a  part 
of  the  past.  This  is  the  last  we  know  of  the  'last 
of  the  Illinois. '  They  were  once  a  great  and  pros- 
perous people,  as  advanced  and  as  humane  as  any 
of  the  aborigines  around  them;  we  do  not  know 
that  a  drop  of  their  blood  now  animates  a  human 
being,  but  their  name  is  perpetuated  in  this  great 
State,  of  whose  record  of  the  past  all  of  us  feel 
so  proud,  and  of  whose  future  the  hopes  of  us  all 
are  so  sanguine. 

"Till  the  morning  light  revealed  that  the  canoes 
were  gone  the  confederates  believed  that  their  san- 
guinary work  had  been  so  thoroughly  done  that 
not  a  living  soul  remained.  So  soon  as  the  escape 
was  discovered,  the  pursuit  was  commenced,  but  as 
we  have  seen,  without  success.  The  pursuers  re- 
turned disappointed  and  dejected  that  their  ene- 
mies' scalps  were  not  hanging  from  their  belts. 
But    surely    blood    enough    had    been    spilled— 


180  Starved  Rock 

vengeance  should  have  been  more  than  satisfied. 

"I  have  failed,  no  doubt,  to  properly  render 
Meachelle's  account  of  this  sad  drama,  for  I  have 
been  obliged  to  use  my  own  language,  without  the 
inspiration  awakened  in  him  by  the  memory  of  the 
scene  which  served  as  his  first  baptism  in  blood. 
Who  can  wonder  that  it  made  a  lasting  impression 
on  his  youthful  mind?  Still,  he  was  not  fond  of 
relating  it,  nor  would  he  speak  of  it  except  to  those 
who  had  acquired  his  confidence  and  intimacy.  It 
is  probably  the  only  account  to  be  had  related  by  an 
eye-witness,  and  we  may  presume  that  it  is  the  most 
authentic." 

While  the  writer  must  confess  that  the  learned 
jurist's  version  of  the  Starved  Rock  tradition  is 
open  toxthe  criticism  that  some  of  its  details  are 
improbable,  nevertheless  of  the  substantial  truth 
of  the  legend,  we  believe  there  can  be  but  little 
doubt.  Even  man's  wonder  stories  have  always 
something  of  fact,  of  human  experience,  or  of  phy- 
sical phenomena,  behind  them,  as  one  might  reply 
to  Mr.  Beckwith's  skepticism.  But  the  story  of 
Starved  Rock,  as  told  by  Judge  Caton,  has  been 
corroborated  by  other  competent  searchers  for  the 
truth,  especially  by  the  late  Hon.  Perry  A.  Arm- 
strong, of  Morris,  another  of  the  pioneers  of  La 
Salle  county,  Illinois,  who  knew  personally  many 
of  the  famous  Indians  of  this  part  of  the  State,  who 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  181 

died  subsequently  to  the  coming  of  the  permanent 
American  settlers.  Among  these  was  an  old  chief 
named  Shick  Shack,  claiming  to  be  104  years  of 
age,  who,  as  Mr.  Armstrong  said,  in  an  address* 
at  a  celebration  at  Starved  Rock  of  the  two-hun- 
dredth anniversary  (September  10,  1873)  of  its 
discovery,  told  him  substantially  the  same  story 
that  Meachelle  told  Judge  Caton,  which  the  latter 
published  in  1876.  Shick  Shack  said  he  was  pres- 
ent at  the  siege,  a  boy  half  grown. 

The  late  N.  Matson,f  of  Princeton,  was  another 
student  of  this  legend.  In  prosecuting  his  re- 
searches, he  spent  much  time  (prior  to  1882)  with 
the  descendants  of  French  colonists  who  had  lived 
at  Kaskaskia  and  Cahokia  in  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury. Mr.  Matson  was  more  than  convinced  of  the 
truth  of  the  legend,  so  called.  Indeed,  he  goes  so 
far  as  to  identify  "the  only  survivor  of  the  fear- 
ful tragedy."  This  warrior,  Mr.  Matson  tells  us, 
was  a  young  man,  "  partly  white,  being  a  descen- 
dant on  his  father's  side  from  the  French.  Being- 
alone  in  the  world  after  the  catastrophe,  he  went 
to  Peoria,  joined  the  colony,  and  there  ended  his 
days.  He  embraced  Christianity,  and  became  an 
officer  in  the  church,  assuming  the  name  of  An- 
tonio La  Bell ;  and  his  descendants  are  now  (1882) 


*  Ottawa  Free  Trader;  September,  1873. 
t  Matson  :  "Pioneers  of  Illinois,"  1882. 


182  Starved  Rock 

living  near  Prairie  du  Rocher,  one  of  whom, 
Charles  La  Bell,  was  a  party  to  a  suit  in  the  United 
States  court  to  recover  the  land  on  which  the  city 
of  Peoria  now  stands." 

Mr.  Matson  further  states  that  •  Col.  Jos.  N. 
Bourassa,  a  descendant  of  the  Illinois  French,  liv- 
ing (1882)  in  Kansas,  had  collected  a  large  num- 
ber of  stories  relating  to  the  Starved  Rock  tragedy ; 
and  himself  had  heard  two  aged  warriors,  who 
participated  in  the  massacre,  narrate  many  inci- 
dents which  took  place  at  that  time.  Another  old 
Indian  named  Mashaw,  once  well  known  by  early 
Ottawa  and  Hennepin  traders,  Mr.  Matson  says, 
also  made  various  statements,  through  an  inter- 
preter, in  relation  to  the  tragedy,  to  early  Ameri- 
can traders  and  settlers.  Mashaw  said  that  seven 
Indians  escaped  from  the  Rock.  Medore  Jennette, 
an  employe  of  the  Chouteaus,  the  famous  fur 
traders  at  St.  Louis,  who  lived  many  years  at  the 
Pottawatomie  village  at  the  mouth  of  Pox  River 
[Ottawa],  has  left  many  traditions  of  this  tragedy 
to  his  descendants,  according  to  Mr.  Matson. 
Jennette  came  to  the  country  in  1772  and  says  he 
himself  saw  the  bones  of  the  dead  Illinois  upon 
the  Rock.  An  Indian  named  Shaddy  (or  Shatyj 
was  still  another  who  gave  Mr.  Matson  details  of 
this  story,  which  he  had  from  his  father,  who  was 
present.    Shaddy  (Shaty)  said  only  one  man,  the 


The  Last  of  the  Illinois  183 

half-breed  La  Bell,  escaped.  Two  traders,  Robert 
Maillet  and  Felix  La  Pance,  are  said  to  have  left 
the  record  that,  returning  from  Canada  with  goods, 
they  saw  the  buzzards  on  Starved  Rock  cleaning 
the  bones  of  the  dead.  Further,  Mr.  Matson  adds 
that  Father  Buche,  a  priest  at  Peoria,  traveling 
up  Illinois  River  the  following  spring  (1770), 
ascended  the  Rock  and  there  saw  the  horrid  evi- 
dences of  the  tragedy,  the  holy  Father's  written 
story  of  this  visit  being  in  manuscript  (dated 
April,  1770)  which,  in  1882,  wTas  in  the  hands  of 
one  Hypolite  Pilette,  then  living  on  the  American 
Bottom. 

Not  to  go  further,  it  may  be  said  in  conclusion 
that  there  is  nothing  improbable  in  the  Starved 
Rock  legend.  In  this  narrative  we  have  seen 
the  Rock  at  least  once  used  as  a  refuge  and  its  oc- 
cupants subjected  to  siege,  although  it  did  not  come 
to  so  dire  a  consummation  as  the  siege  we  are  con- 
sidering; but  the  murderous  character  of  this  de- 
nouement is  entirely  consistent  with  Indian  hab- 
it and  practice.  Speaking  of  the  remorseless  mas- 
sacre of  several  hundred  Foxes  (Outagamies)  at 
Detroit,  1712,  by  French  and  Indians,  Parkman* 
says:  "There  is  a  disposition  to  assume  that 
events  like  that  just  recounted  were  a  consequence 
of  the  contact  of  white  men  with  red,  but  the  primi- 


Parkman  :     "Half   Century  of  Conflict." 


184  Starved  Rock 

tive  Indian  was  quite  able  to  enact  such  tragedies 
without  the  aid  of  Europeans.  Before  French  or 
English  influence  had  been  felt  in  the  interior  of 
the  continent,  a  great  part  of  North  America  was 
the  frequent  witness  of  scenes  more  lurid  in  color- 
ing and  on  a  larger  scale  of  horror.  In  the  first 
half  of  the  seventeenth  century  the  whole  country, 
from  Lake  Superior  to  the  Tennessee  and  from  the 
Alleghenies  to  the  Mississippi,  was  ravaged  by 
wars  of  extermination,  in  which  tribes,  large  and 
powerful,  by  Indian  standards,  perished,  dwindled 
into  feeble  remnants  or  were  absorbed  by  other 
tribes  and  vanished  from  sight."  Extermination 
of  the  red  man  by  red  men's  and  white  men's  hands 
alike  was  the  fate  of  the  Indian ;  and  the  Starved 
Rock  tragedy  was  but  an  incident  of  the  resistless 
and  remorseless  movement  of  Indian  destiny. 


THE  AFTERMATH. 

Far  as  we  are  informed,  so  thick  and  fast  they  fell, 
Scarce  twenty  of  their  number  at  night  did  get  home  well. 

— Puritan  Ballad. 

THE  POTTAWATOMIES. 

The  Hon.  P.  A.  Armstrong,  of  Morris,  111.,  who 
has  written  much  upon  the  Indian  wars  of  Illinois 
in  the  last  century,  in  1873  published  in  the  Mor- 
ris Reformer  a  series  of  articles  on  the  Starved 
Rock  tradition,  based  upon  personal  interviews 
had  sixty  years  ago  with  early  pioneers  of  La  Salle 
and  Grundy  counties,  as  well  as  the  retiring  red 
men,  trappers,  traders  and  other  frontiersmen. 
After  sketching  the  war  which  ended  with  the  Rock 
tragedy,  Mr.  Armstrong  brings  the  conquering 
tribes  together  the  following  spring  on  Indian 
Creek,  in  La  Salle  county,  north  and  east  of  Ot- 
tawa, where  they  met  to  have  a  jollification  over 
their  victory,  and  then  proceeds  substantially  as 
follows : 

"On  this  occasion  weeks  were  spent  in  feasting, 
dancing  and  merrymaking,— weeks  fraught  with 
the  most  direful  consequences  to  the  peace  and  har- 
mony of  the  allies ;  for  at  this  feast  each  and  every 
warrior  was  allowed  and  expected  to  recite  in  the 

185 


A  Ravine  Near  Starved  Rock,  Called  French  Canyon. 


The  Aftermath  187 

most  exaggerated  manner  his  prowess  as  a  war- 
rior ;  the  scalps  he  had  taken,  the  dangers  encount- 
ered and  sufferings  endured,  commencing  in  all  in- 
stances with  'Big  Indian  me.'  Jealousies  at  once 
sprung  up  as  each  candidate  applied  for  applause, 
the  squaws  and  pappooses  naturally  siding  with 
the  warriors  of  their  respective  tribes ;  and  a  feel- 
ing of  distrust,  if  not  hate,  was  soon  engendered, 
which  daily  increased,  so  that  when  the  chiefs  came 
to  talk  about  the  division  of  the  territory  they  had 
acquired,  each  tribe  claimed  the  lion's  share.  They 
all  desired  that  territory  watered  by  the  Illinois 
River  and  its  tributaries.  An  amicable  division 
or  adjustment  could  not  be  made.  The  Miamis 
were  by  far  more  numerous  than  either  of  the  other 
tribes,  and  moreover  were  much  better  armed, 
since  they  had  quite  a  number  of  muskets  while 
the  other  tribes  had  none.  This  rendered  the 
Miamis  very  domineering  and  haughty.  They  de- 
manded all  or  nearly  all  of  the  newly  acquired  ter- 
ritory, which,  of  course,  the  other  two  tribes  re- 
sisted ;  hence  an  open  rupture  was  made,  and  a  bat- 
tle ensued  upon  the  very  grounds  they  had  used  in 
feasting,  the  Pottawatomies  and  Kickapoos  uniting 
their  forces  against  the  Miamis.  Many  were  slain 
on  both  sides ;  and  after  fighting  from  morning  un- 
til night,  the  Miamis  took  advantage  of  the  night  to 
withdraw,  leaving  the  allies  in  possession  of  the 


188  Starved  Rock 

battle  field.  But  this  battle,  although  a  severe  one, 
was  by  no  means  a  decisive  one.  The  losses  on  both 
sides  were  heavy,  and  neither  were  in  a  condition 
to  renew  the  fight  for  several  months,  as  they  were 
out  of  provisions  and  short  of  clothing  and  imple- 
ments of  war. 

"The  rest  of  the  summer  and  following  winter 
was  spent  in  preparing  for  a  renewal  of  the  contest 
the  following  spring.  The  Miamis  went  down  the 
river  and  thence  to  Kaskaskia,  while  the  Pottawat- 
omies  and  Kickapoos  remained  near  their  previous 
winter  quarters,  collecting  provisions  and  clothing 
and  constructing  bows  and  arrows  and  other  im- 
plements of  Indian  warfare.  Early  in  the  spring 
following  (1771),  the  Miamis  returned  northward 
to  give  battle  to  their  late  allies,  but  now  bitter 
enemies,  and  were  met  near  Peoria,  where  another 
battle  was  fought,  which,  like  the  former  ome,  was 
not  decisive— was,  indeed,  a  drawn  battle ;  and  each 
party  buried  their  own  dead. 

"The  war  lasted,  with  indifferent  success  to 
either  party,  for  about  five  years,  and  many  a  hard 
fought  battle  attested  the  bravery  of  these  unfor- 
tunate, passion-blinded  savages,  who  left  their  dead 
buried  in  many  places  throughout  the  coveted  ter- 
ritory. In  the  year  1775  they  had  worked  around 
and  nearly  back  to  the  place  where  their  first  battle 
had  occurred  with  the  Illinois.    Harassed  and  worn 


The  Aftermath  189 

by  repeated  and  sanguinary  battles,  both  sides  were 
well  nigh  exhausted. 

"  A  proposition  was  then  made  on  the  part  of  the 
Miamis  to  pick  three  hundred  warriors  from  each 
side  and  let  them  commence  to  fight  at  sunrise  and 
continue  the  fight  until  either  the  one  side  or  the 
other  should  conquer.  This  proposition  was  at 
once  accepted  by  the  Pottawatomies  and  Kicka- 
poos,  upon  the  condition  that  the  weapons  on  both 
sides  should  be  the  bow  and  arrow,  tomahawk, 
knife  and  spear,  or  such  implements  of  warfare 
as  were  peculiarly  Indian,  and  that  the  remnant 
of  each  army  should  cross  to  the  east  side  of  the 
Wabash  River,  so  that  no  assistance  or  interfer- 
ence could  possibly  be  made  by  either  side.  This 
agreement  was  entered  into  with  all  the  solemnity 
of  the  high  councils  of  these  respective  tribes,  and 
three  hundred  picked  warriors  were  selected  from 
each  side,  who  crossed  over  to  the  bloody  ground 
and  encamped  upon  Sugar  Creek,  which  empties 
into  the  Wabash  River.  The  place  selected  for  this 
terrible  duel  was  a  heavy  timber  about  twenty  miles 
from  the  Wabash.  The  battle  was  to  commence  at 
sunrise  the  following  morning. 

"The  fated  morning  came— a  calm,  cool,  bright 
September  morn,  and  with  the  coming  of  the  morn- 
ing sun  the  battle  commenced.  Six  hundred  stal- 
wart warriors  engaging  in  a  strife  for  victory  or 


190  Starved  Rock 

death.  Here  were  the  deeds  of  a  Thermopylae  re- 
enacted.  Quarter  was  neither  asked  nor  given— 
' death  was  the  watchword  and  reply.'  Now  shield- 
ing behind  some  giant  oak— every  ruse  was  re- 
sorted to  in  the  hope  of  inducing  the  enemy  to  ex- 
pose his  person— now  grappling  in  a  death  strug- 
gle, the  combatants  fell  never  to  rise  again. 

"This  duel  raged  from  sunrise  to  sunset,  when 
twelve  warriors  only  remained— five  Miamis  and 
seven  Pottawatomies  and  Kickapoos.  The  five 
run,  the  seven  are  the  victors.  The  great  chiefs, 
Shick  Shack,  Sugar,  Marquett  and  Shaty  were 
among  the  seven.  The  Miamis  were  conquered; 
and  by  their  agreement  gave  up  all  claim  to  the 
hunting  ground  of  the  annihilated  Illinois  and  re- 
tired east  of  the  Wabash. 

"Thus  did  the  Pottawatomies  and  Kickapoos  be- 
come the  successors  of  the  Illinois,  and  soon  after 
this  final  battle  with  the  Miamis  they  divided  the 
territory  between  themselves,  the  Kickapoos  tak- 
ing all  the  territory  adjoining  the  Wabash  west  to 
a  line  running  north  and  south  through  Oliver's 
Grove  in  Livingston  county,  and  the  Pottawat- 
omies all  the  territory  west  of  that  line." 

The  Pottawatomies,  having  taken  undisputed 
possession  of  their  conquest,  made  their  principal 
village  on  the  plain  northwest  of  Starved  Rock, 
near  the  present  village  of  Utica,  where,  among 


The  Aftermath  191 

others,  the  youthful  Gr.  S.  Hubbard,  later  one  of 
the  founders  of  the  city  of  Chicago,  as  representa- 
tive of  the  American  Fur  Company,  carried  on  a 
trade  with  them.  Here,  unlike  the  vanished  Illi- 
nois, the  Pottawatomies  lived  in  tents,  not  in  cab- 
ins. Another  important  village  was  called  Wau- 
bunsee  (or  Wauponehsee) ,  located  at  the  mouth 
of  the  Fox  River  of  Illinois,  where  is  now  the  city 
of  Ottawa. 

In  1814,  a  treaty  was  made  with  the  Ottawas, 
Chippewas  and  Pottawatomies,  kindred  tribes,  by 
Mnian  Edwards,  William  Clark  and  Auguste 
Chouteau,  by  which  the  Indians  gave  up  their  Ill- 
inois lands  south  of  a  line  running  west  from  Lake 
Michigan  to  the  Mississippi.  A  few  years  later 
(1834)  the  Pottawatomies  were  removed  from  Ill- 
inois to  new  lands  beyond  the  Mississippi ;  and  the 
Indian's  part  in  the  history  of  Starved  Rock  came 
to  an  end  forever. 


MODERN  STARVED  ROCK. 

Methinks  you  take  luxurious  pleasure 
In  your  novel  western  leisure. 

— Thoreau. 

THE  ERA  OF  THE  WHITE  MAN. 

"Then  the  white  man  came,  pale  as  the  dawn, 
with  a  load  of  thought,  with  slumbering  intelli- 
gence as  a  fire  raked  up.  He  bought  the  Indian's 
moccasins  and  furs;  then  he  bought  his  hunting 
grounds ;  and  at  length  he  forgot  where  the  Indian 
was  buried  and  plowed  up  his  bones."  It  is  the 
same  here  as  everywhere;  each  locality  plays  its 
variation  of  the  theme  which  but  now  is  dying 
away  in  the  west,  as  the  wild  Indian  slowly  dis- 
appears off  the  face  of  the  earth ;  and  from  a  feudal 
castle  of  Sieur  de  la  Salle  and  a  Rock  of  refuge 
for  hunted  savages,  Starved  Rock  has  passed  into 
its  "western  leisure." 

Always  a  landmark  of  the  great  West  in  the 
most  romantic  epochs  of  its  history,  it  still  was  such 
when  the  English  settlers  began  to  invade  the  Ill- 
inois country;  and  it  would  be  difficult  to  find  a 
traveler  journeying  through  the  Illinois  Valley, 
"spying  out  the  land,"  who  did  not  turn  aside  to 
visit  and  in  his  letters  call  attention  to  this  re- 
markable natural  curiosity. 

193 


194  Starved  Rock 

Flint  in  his  "  History  and  Geography  of  the 
Mississippi  Valley,"  published  in  1833,  devotes  a 
page  to  "Rock  Fort,"  describing  the  beauty  of  the 
Rock  itself  and  its  surroundings  and  repeating  the 
tradition  that  has  given  it  its  name,  though  he  no- 
where calls  it  other  than  "Rock  Fort."  The  Rock, 
he  says,  "has  on  its  top  a  level  surface  of  three- 
fourths  of  an  acre  in  extent,  and  is  covered  by  soil 
several  feet  in  depth,  which  has  thrown  up  a  growth 
of  young  trees.  These  form,  as  they  receive  their 
peculiar  tints  from  the  seasons,  a  verdant  or  gor- 
geous and  particolored  crown  for  this  battlement 
of  nature's  creation."  He  describes  the  natural 
beauty  and  defenses  of  the  Rock  and  adds  that  the 
Illinois  could  have  escaped  destruction  if  they 
could  have  gotten  water ;  so  that  he  appears  to  have 
believed  the  truth  of  the  story  of  the  disastrous 
siege,  even  if  he  nowhere  gives  the  Rock  its  modern 
name. 

Charles-  Fenno  Hoffman,  a  then  more  or  less  dis- 
tinguished New  York  litterateur,  who  visited  the 
Rock  in  January,  1834,  while  on  a  winter  tour 
through  the  West,  on  the  other  hand,  calls  the 
place  "Starved  Rock"  and  nothing  else,  showing 
that  such  was  its  common  name  at  that  time  in  the 
Illinois  country.  Hoffman  has  a  note,  written  by 
an  unidentified  friend  resident  in  Illinois,  which 
repeats  the  familiar  legend,  with  this  single  ex- 


Modern  Starved  Rock  195 

ception,  that  while  the  writer  says  one  person  es- 
caped from  the  Rock,  that  person  was  a  squaw,  who 
was  still  alive  when  the  Englishmen  entered  the 
country. 

Schoolcraft  (1820),  in  his  " Travels  through  the 
Central  Portions  of  the  Mississippi  Valley,"  re- 
cords having  visited  the  Rock,  when  he  made  the 
sketch  from  which  the  engraving  used  at  the  end  of 
this  chapter  has  been  made.  "  Strong  and  almost 
inaccessible  by  nature,"  he  says,  "this  natural 
battlement  has  been  still  further  fortified  by  the 
Indians;  and  many  years  ago  was  the  scene  of  a< 
desperate  conflict  between  the  Pottawatomies  and 
one  branch  of  the  Illinois  Indians. ' '  He  then  pro- 
ceeds to  tell  how  the  Illinois  fled  to  the  Rock ;  how 
they  got  water  by  letting  down  vessels  attached  to 
ropes;  how  their  enemies  prevented  their  getting 
water  by  cutting  away  the  vessels.  "The  conse- 
quence was  a  surrender  which  was  followed  by  a 
total  extinction  of  the  tribe."  He  erroneously 
credits  the  story  to  Charlevoix  (1682-1761).  The 
Illinois  River  seen  from  the  Rock  he  calls  "a  view 
of  this  modern  Oxus. " 

Schoolcraft  found  the  site  of  a  Pottawatomie 
[Miami?]  village  on  Buffalo  Rock  and  another 
village  site  on  the  plain  below  that  plateau,  pro- 
tected by  a  ditch  and  wall.  Here,  "our  trusty 
[Indian]    guide  'Peerish'  informed  us,  was  the 


196  Starved  Rock 

last  stand  of  the  Kaskaskias  before  they  re- 
treated to  the  Rock  Fort." 

Of  all  the  many  articles  that  were  written  of 
Starved  Rock  in  the  first  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  however,  none,  perhaps,  came  to  have  a 
wider  circulation,  or  gave  the  Rock  wider  celebrity, 
than  one  written  by  Charles  Lanman,  which  was 
republished  as  an  "elegant  extract  in  prose  from 
an  eloquent  writer"  in  the  famous  "Sanders 
Series"  of  readers  "for  the  use  of  academies  and 
the  higher  classes  in  common  and  select  schools." 
It  was  read  and  declaimed  by  Illinois  youth  of  sev- 
eral decades ;  and  I  have  no  doubt  that  the  article 
so  published  has  been  the  means  of  bringing  thou- 
sands of  curious  visitors  to  the  Rock  in  the  past 
fifty  years. 

The  era  of  the  "plowshare  and  pruning  hook" 
has  come  to  Starved  Rock;  but  the  frightful  and 
laborious  past,  soothed  and  softened  by  the  tem- 
pering touch  of  lapsing  time,  has  left  its  record 
which  now  is  like  the 

Legends  and  runes 
Of  credulous  days;  old  fancies  that  have  lain 
Silent   from  boyhood,  taking  voice  again, 
Warmed  into  life  once  more,  even  as  tunes 
That,  frozen  in  the  fabled  hunting  horn, 
Thawed  into  sound. 

The  modern  Starved  Rock  beleaguerers  come  ar- 
rayed in  outing  suits  and  picnic  habiliments ;  and 


Modem  Starved  Rock  197 

where  once  the  Frenchmen  braved  the  terrors  of 
savagery,  his  nineteenth  century  successors,  born 
of  all  nations,  now  invade  the  land  to  make  at 
fresco  holiday. 

Near  by,  and  accessible  to  pleasure  seekers,  are 
the  glens  and  ravines,  locally  called  canyons,  of  Ill- 
inois River,  which  unite  to  make  this  the  most  in- 
teresting locality  from  a  scenic  point  of  view  on  the 
entire  stream.  Farther  away,  but  still  within  even 
walking  distance— a  few  miles— is  the  famous 
Deer  Park  Glen,  the  beauty  spot  of  the  Big  Ver- 
milion River  which  itself  is  for  many  miles  of  its 
length  the  most  interesting  region,  from  the  geolo- 
gist's and  artist's  point  of  view,  in  all  northern 
Illinois. 

In  short,  Starved  Rock  has  become  a  very  pop- 
ular summer  resort  of  the  Illinois  Valley,  visited 
by  thousands  of  people  annually  from  all  parts  of 
the  Union.  And  now  that  the  state  of  Illinois  has 
provided  by  law  for  a  park  commission  and  pro- 
vided the  money  to  buy  the  Rock  and  many  con- 
tiguous acres  for  a  state  park  and  forest  reserve, 
the  great  historic  site  will  be  preserved  from  the 
destructive  attrition  of  pure  commercialism  that 
was  ruining  its  physical  beauty,  and  the  Rock  will 
forever  stand  as  a  monument  to  the  indomitable 
La  Salle  and  his  noble,  generous  and  unselfish 
friend  Tonty,  to  the  martyred  Ribourde  and  those 


198 


Starved  Rock 


other  " apostles  to  the  gentiles,"  as  well  as  to  those 
weak  ones  of  earth,  whose  mortal  sufferings  here 
were,  in  God's  mysterious  wisdom,  not  the  least  of 
the  many  contributions  of  human  sacrifice  and  suf- 
fering which  have  preserved  to  the  people  of  the 
Illinois  Valley,  and  of  the  United  States,  and  of  the 
world,  the  priceless  heritage  of  English  Liberty. 


Starved  Rock. 


(Reproduced,    greatly    reduced    in    size,    from    School- 
craft's "Travels,"  etc.     It  is  the  first  picture  ever 
made  of  the  Rock,  so  far  as  is  known.) 


RELICS. 

Some  rusted  swords  appear  in  dust; 
One,  bending  forward,  says, 
"The  arm9  belonged  to  heroes  gone; 
We  never  hear  their  praise  in  song." 

— Duan  of  Ca-Lodin. 

AN  ANCIENT  DEED. 

[Translation.] 
"The  year  1693,  the  19th  of  April,  I,  Francis  de 
la  Forest,  Captain  on  the  retired  list  in  the  marine 
service,  Seignor  of  part  of  all  the  country  of 
Louisiana,  otherwise  Illinois,  granted  to  Monsieur 
de  Tonty  and  to  me  by  the  King  to  enjoy  in  per- 
petuity, we,  our  heirs,  successors,  and  assigns,  the 
same  as  it  was  recognized  by  the  act  of  the  Sov- 
ereign Council  in  Quebec  in  the  month  of  August, 
of  the  year  1691,  the  said  council  assembled,  de- 
clare in  the  presence  of  the  undersigned  witness 
that  I  have  ceded,  sold,  and  transferred  to  M. 
Michel  Acau*  the  half  of  my  part  of  the  above  de- 
scribed concession,  to  enjoy  the  same  like  myself 
from  the  present  time,  to  him,  his  heirs,  succes- 
sors, and  assigns,  with  the  same  rights,  privileges, 
prerogatives  and  benefits  which  have  been  here- 
tofore accorded  to  the  late  M.  de  la  Salle  as  it  ap- 


*  See  Chapter  on  "The  Missions,"  supra. 

199 


e+C*s  /ace  J»K  ?i,»*us~. 


XT  ns   s  Z-FTV    ~  —asp*.  *%  A*« 

^'A  CO  $*/Efo*U**fr'  y,c.Lt  /^*,r*w 

Facsimile  of  the   First   Deed  Executed  in 
Illinois. 


Relics  201 

pears  particularly  in  the  decree  of  the  Council  of 
the  King ;  and  in  consideration  of  the  sum  of  6,000 
livres  in  current  beaver  which  the  said  M.  Acau 
shall  pay  me  at  Chicagou,  where  I  stay,  and  upon 
the  making  of  the  payment  down  I  cannot  demand 
from  him  any  advantage  neither  for  the  carriage 
of  the  said  beaver  to  Montreal  nor  for  the  risk, 
and  as  there  is  no  notary  here  for  him  to  pass 
an'  instrument  of  sale  I  bind  myself  at  the  first 
occasion  to  send  him  one,  as  also  a  copy  compared 
before  a  notary  of  the  above  mentioned  decree  of 
the  Council  of  the  King  touching  the  present  con- 
cession, on  faith  of  which  we  have  both  signed  the 
said  contract  of  sale  the  one  and  the  other  the  day 
and  the  year  as  above ;  and  in  case  that  one  of  us 
two  would  dispose  of  his  part  the  remaining  one 
shall  be  the  first  preferred,  and  this  is  mutual  be- 
tween M.  de  Tonty  and  me.  Made  in  duplicate  the 
day  and  year  aforesaid. 

"Dela  Forest. 

"M.  Aco. 

uDe  la  Descouvertes,  Witness. 

" Nicholas  Laurens,  de  la  Chapelle,  Witness." 

The  deed  is  indorsed  on  the  back  to  the  following- 
effect:  "Bill  of  sale  between  Mr.  Aco  and  me  con- 
veying the  land  of  the  Illinois." 

This  deed  was  purchased  in  Paris,  late  in  year 
1893,  by  Hon.  Edward  G.  Mason  and  deposited  by 


202  Starved  Rock 

him  in  the  archives  of  the  Historical  Society  of 
Chicago,  January  16, 1894.  It  is  believed  to  be  the 
first  conveyance  of  Illinois  real  estate,— though  its 
metes  and  bounds  are  not  very  clear,  except  that  it 
was  the  Illinois  country,— made  by  deed  executed 
within  the  borders  of  the  State ;  but  the  deed  was 
also  a  conveyance  of  a  trading  concession  as  of 
lands.  The  document  covers  one  page  of  large 
foolscap  paper  and  is  apparently  all  in  the  hand- 
writing of  La  Forest.*  The  paper  bears  an  ancient 
watermark  and  is  of  the  same  texture  and  quality 
as  that  used  in  Canada  at  the  time  of  its  date. 

In  presenting  the  document  to  the  Society,  Mr. 
Mason  epitomized  the  facts  given  in  this  little  book, 
concluding  as  follows : 

i '  The  grantee  in  the  deed,  whose  name  is  usually 
written  Michel  Accau,  was  the  real  leader  of  the 
party  which,  by  La  Salle 's  direction,  explored  the 
upper  Mississippi  and  discovered  the  Falls  of  St. 
Anthony  in  1682.  Father  Hennepin  accompanied 
this  expedition  as  a  volunteer,  and  [having  written 
an  account  of  his  travels  on  that  occasion]  is  usu- 
ally given  the  credit  of  its  discoveries.  Accau  sub- 
sequently resided  in  Kaskaskia  [town  near  Starved 
Rock]  and  married  a  daughter  of  the  chief  of  the 


*  After  La  Forest's  trading  concession  was  revoked  in  1702,  he  be- 
came Cadillac's  lieutenant  at  Detroit  and  in  1710  was  appointed  com- 
mander of  that  post,  which  position  he  held  until  1714.  He  died  at 
Boucherville  in  1719. — Thwaites  :  "La  Hontan's  Voyages." 


Relics  203 

Kaskaskia  tribe.  A  record  of  their  marriage  still 
exists  in  the  ancient  register  of  the  [new]  parish 
of  the  Immaculate  Conception  at  Kaskaskia  [on 
the  Mississippi]. 

"Of  the  witnesses,  De  La  Descouverte  was  a  Ca- 
nadian voyageur  from  Lachine,  who  accompanied 
La  Salle  to  the  mouth  of  the  Mississippi  in  1682 ; 
LaChapelle  was  also  one  of  La  Salle's  men,  who 
was  with  him  in  the  year  1680,  and  was  sent  by  him 
from  the  St.  Joseph  River  and  the  Michillimack- 
inac  in  search  of  La  Salle's  lost  vessel,  the  Griffin, 
and  afterwards  joined  Tonty  at  Fort  Crevecoeur, 
near  the  present  site  of  Peoria. 

"It  is  quite  certain  that  this  document  was  ex- 
ecuted either  at  Fort  St.  Louis  of  the  Illinois  or 
at  Chicago,  with  the  probability  in  favor  in  the 
latter  place  [as  La  Forest  was  stationed  there 
while  he  and  Tonty  divided  the  concession].  In 
1693  there  had  been  already,  certainly  for  eight 
[or  ten?]  years,  a  fort  here,  and  ther,e  was  near 
it  at  that  time  a  Jesuit  mission ;  and  doubtless  here 
occurred  the  first  conveyance  of  real  estate  in  what 
is  now  Illinois  executed  within  its  boundaries, 
which  this  ancient  document  evidences.  It  is  fit- 
ting and  fortunate  that  it  should,  two  hundred 
years  after  its  execution,  come  into  possession  of 
the  Historical  Society  of  Chicago  to  be  preserved 
sacredly  by  it. " 


204 


Starved  Rock 


Another  interesting  relic  of  Starved  Rock's  an- 
cient days  is  a  cross,  of  which  below  is  a  picture 
made  from  a  photograph  (full  size  of  original). 


A  Rare  Cross. 


It  was  found  near  the  Rock,  and  was  the  property 
of  the  late  Col.  D.  F.  Hitt.  To  whom  it  belonged 
is  of  course  unknown.    It  is  made  of  brass  and  may 


Relics  205 

have  belonged  to  any  of  the  soldiers  or  voyageurs 
or  even  Indians  who  made  the  Rock  their  home  or 
stopping  place.  The  cross  looks  much  like  one  of 
the  rare  " Lorraine  crosses,"  still  found  at  inter- 
vals in  Wisconsin.  A  similar  cross,  found  some 
years  ago  by  a  Temagaming  Indian,  returning 
from  his  winter's  trapping,  under  a  growth  of 
moss,  as  he  was  clearing  the  ground  for  his  tent, 
was  declared  by  the  highest  antiquarian  authority 
in  Canada— Father  Jones,  of  the  Jesuit  College  in 
Montreal— to  be  one  of  a  lot  of  sacred  trinkets  sent 
out  by  a  certain  Countess  of  Lorraine,  to  be  dis- 
tributed to  the  Huron  and  other  Indians,  as  a  re- 
ward for  espousing  the  cause  of  the  French  as 
against  the  English.  He  fixed  the  date  of  its  pre- 
sentation as  certainly  earlier  than  1649,  because  in 
the  spring  of  that  year  the  Huron  tribe  was  prac 
tically  exterminated  by  the  more  warlike  and 
crafty  Iroquois.  The  Jesuits  then  withdrew  their 
mission,  and  no  more  of  these  Lorraine  crosses 
were  distributed  in  Canada,  though  they  are  fre- 
quently found  in  Wisconsin  and  other  regions  that 
later  came  into  the  field  of  the  Jesuit  missions.  In 
the  possession  of  the  Chicago  Historical  Society 
is  a  similar  but  larger  cross  of  silver,  found  near 
the  site  of  La  Salle's  fort  on  Peoria  Lake.  Being 
of  silver  it  was  doubtless  a  gift  to  a  chief. 


206  Starved  Rock 

THE  ROCK  IN  LITERATURE. 

The  Rock  has  been  the  subject  of  numerous 
legendary  tales  and  poems  other  than  those  men- 
tioned in  the  text,  a  few  of  which  may  be  mentioned 
here,  to  wit : 

" Legend  of  Starved  Rock,"  by  Mary  W.  Jan- 
vein;  first  published  in  " Peterson's  Magazine," 
December,  1856. 

"O-na-we-quah;  or,  A  Legend  of  Starved  Rock," 
by  Wm.  Rounseville ;  first  published  in  the  "  West- 
ern Magazine,"  185-. 

"Ulah:  An  Indian  Legend  Verified,"  a  narra- 
tive poem;  in  "Ulah  and  Other  Poems,"  by  Aman- 
da T.  Jones,  Buffalo:  H.  H.  Otis  &  Breed,  Butler 
&  Co.,  1861. 

These  stories  are  purely  fanciful  and  bear  no 
resemblance  to  any  " legend"  of  the  Rock  in  com- 
mon currency. 

The  most  noteworthy  story  having  Starved  Rock 
for  its  scene  is  "  The'  Story  of  Tonty,"  by  the  late 
Mrs.  Catherwood,  a  very  charming  historical  novel- 
ette. Other  recent  novels  utilize  Starved  Rock  to 
a  lesser  degree,  but  it  is  hardly  worth  while  to 
catalogue  them  here. 


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